After Mars
by Nurse Betty Page
Summary: AU - Waters of Mars/Adelaide Brookes lives. After saving Adelaide from suicide, the Doctor spends the night with her and leaves in the morning, unaware his actions have caused changes to the timeline. Much later the Twelfth Doctor learns certain facts his Tenth self needs to know, and sets out to find him, unaware of how much his own time line will change because of his decision...
1. Chapter 1

**After Mars**

 **Author Note: This fic is AU and begins with the Tenth Doctor saving Adelaide Brooke from suicide after returning her to earth – which causes a chain of events to unfold that the Doctor had certainly not planned for...**

* * *

 **Summary:**

 **In the moment that Adelaide Brooke walks away from the Doctor on that fateful snowy night, resentful that he had decided to manipulate her fate, the Doctor sees a flash of what is to come: Adelaide's suicide.**

 **He runs into the house, to find her about to shoot herself, and instead, infuriated that he has yet again tried to manipulate her destiny, Adelaide turns the gun on him, telling him he won't stand in her way.**

 **But knowing Adelaide will not harm him, he approached her and talks her out of suicide. But after the laser pistol falls to the carpet, the Doctor and the former commander of Bowie Base One become unexpectedly closer as emotions become muddled and the Doctor desperately tries to explain as he promises her that the future will not be changed, and her grand daughter will still travel the stars. Whilst in the heat of the moment, the Doctor kisses her, and that kiss leads to much more as he tells her that nothing is more life affirming than making love.**

 **After their brief encounter the Doctor leaves in the morning, telling her that she must believe him when he says Susie Fontana Brooks will still become a space pioneer, inspired now face to face by her grandmother's tales. And so the Doctor leaves, planning to travel for a long time before answering the call of the Ood Planet, because he feels a sense of impending doom that is linked somehow to his own predicted death...**

 **Many years later, the Twelfth Doctor is travelling alone, still feeling part of him is lost, along with a memory that had become a story of a girl called Clara Oswald, who now seems to exist only in the chords of the music he plays on his guitar. Then the Tardis lands unexpectedly onboard an early earth built light speed ship. On meeting the Captain, he learns she is Susie Fontana Brooke – the grand daughter of Adelaide – who is furious with him and slaps his face, telling him he could have had the decency to go back for her grandmother after what he had done...**

 **Once Susie has explained all, the Doctor returns to his Tardis and sets a course for Earth, in the year 2060, where he meets with Adelaide Brook and once again is met with anger at the mention of the Doctor, because it seems in the mid 2000s, HRT not only slowed ageing but also restored fertility, and the Tenth Doctor's one night stand with Adelaide has resulted in the birth of a daughter, who Adelaide has named Steffi, after her colleague who died in the Mars tragedy whilst watching a last video of her children as the water came in...**

 **The Doctor thinks back to Mars and his other lifetimes, and how could have fallen in love with Adelaide – if not for the Mars disaster and for the fact that he was afraid of his impending death and determined to run... So the Doctor sets out to find his Tenth self, to inform him that Adelaide and his daughter need him.**

 **But the Twelfth Doctor's actions will set off a chain of events that will affect not only the Tenth Doctor, but eventually affect him too - in such a way that he will understand _exactly_ how Adelaide felt when she told his Tenth self the TimeLord Victorious is wrong...**

* * *

 **Rated T For some adult themes also later on a return of the Flood, and much emotional roller coastering!**

 **Disclaimer: I write for love of fan fiction and own nothing.**

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Chapter 1

Earth, 2059:

It was snowing. The Tenth Doctor had stood there and watched her walk away, her parting words had been that the Time Lord Victorious was wrong. So many emotions swirled about inside him, the Doctor couldn't make sense of any of it. All he knew was he had saved Adelaide Brooke, and he had no regrets. She was a legend who would inspire her grand daughter to pilot the first light speed ship, the Brookes family would be earth pioneers in space travel...

 _And Adelaide was also one of the most remarkable people had ever known._ He had watched her fighting to save her crew and her base, refusing to give up even when the odds were against her, she was a remarkable woman and if things had been different, if they had not had to fight the Flood, if the tragedy had not happened... Perhaps, _maybe_ they could have formed a bond, a friendship... perhaps, he even could have loved her...

 _He wanted to follow her into the house._

The Doctor looked up, saw her reach the doorway. She had a laser pistol in her hand. She looked back at him and in that moment, her eyes seemed dead.

The Doctor blinked, and caught the future:

 _Adelaide Brooke died on Earth._

 _Same date, different location._

 _And right now, Adelaide had a laser pistol in her hand..._

His dark eyes widened as he broke into a run, and not for the first time that day, the Doctor yelled _"Adelaide!"_

* * *

There was a crash as he shoved open the front door that she had left ajar.

" _Drop it!"_ he yelled.

Adelaide was standing in the front room, a lamp was on, a soft lamp that threw a glow about a corner of the room that illuminated the pictures on the shelf of her daughter and young granddaughter. She had been standing there, her gaze fixed on her family as she pressed the pistol to her temple.

As the Doctor came into the room, she turned from the pictures and pointed the gun at him, as her eyes blazed with anger.

"Don't you come another step closer," she warmed him bitterly, "You have _no_ right to decided who lives or dies, or _when_ they die!"

Snowflakes were still in his hair and on the shoulders of his coat as the Doctor stood there, while Adelaide kept the gun trained on him. She was over by the fire place. He was in the middle of the room, beside a sofa and standing on a thick rug. There was a distance between them, he couldn't snatch the gun from her hand, and he understood she had every right to be angry.

"I know you won't shoot," he said cautiously, "That's not who you are."

But her aim was unwavering and the look in her eyes resolute.

"Maybe I can't take the chance on letting you walk away, Doctor. You've already changed destiny and that is dangerous."

He ran his fingers through his hair, brushing off snowflakes and shrugged.

"Well, I suppose it _can_ be...then again, so is holding a pistol to your head, or pointing it at me, like you're doing right now..." he met her gaze and held her in it, "Put the gun down, Adelaide, you won't gain anything by shooting yourself or me. _I can see the future. Susie still becomes the first captain of the first light speed ship. It doesn't change._ But if you shoot yourself, she loses her grandmother. It doesn't seem fair, does it? Same outcome, she has a great future but you die now...no, that's not fair at all. It's not fair on your family!"

She was still looking at him coldly, her aim unwavering.

"Put it down," he said again, "It changes nothing, the Adelaide Brooke I know is not the sort of person to die for nothing. Dying for _something_ , that can be a noble reason. But for nothing? You are _so_ much better than that and you know it!"

Her gaze shifted to the pictures of her family once more, and then she gave a heavy sigh and dropped the gun to the carpet.

"You'd better be right that this changes nothing!" she said bitterly, and it sounded like a threat.

The Doctor breathed a relieved sigh and walked over to her, surprising her with a tight hug, and then letting go again.

"They need you," he promised her, "Susie needs you, she needs you more than any one else – the stories about Mars, she needs to hear them from you when she's older, you need to tell her exactly what happened. Who knows, one day maybe her crew could encounter something like the Flood. She needs you to tell her everything."

Adelaide paused for thought, looking again to the family pictures, and then she nodded.

"You're right about that," she admitted, "She _does_ need to know what could be out there waiting for her."

"But it's not all bad," the Doctor promised, "There are some brilliant species to discover, friendly species. It's not every day you come up against something like the Flood."

Sadness clouded her eyes as she thought of her lost colleagues.

"That can never be allowed to happen again."

The look in the Doctor's dark eyes softened as he smiled.

"And there's no one better to advise on safety than you," he reminded her.

Adelaide didn't return his smile.

"This house has been empty for a long time," she replied, "I'd better get the heating on."

"And I'll take care of this," the Doctor said, retrieving the laser pistol from the floor and putting it away in his coat pocket.

Adelaide had reached the door. She looked back at him.

"No need to worry, Doctor," she said calmly, "I'm only putting the heating on, I'm not about to hang myself."

Then she left the room, leaving the Doctor standing beside the pictures of Adelaide's family, once the cause of her death and now her reason to live...

The pipes groaned as the heating system kicked into life, and then Adelaide crossed the hallway and headed for the stairs. The Doctor left the front room, paused to close the front door and then looked up the stairway.

"Do you need me to come with you?"

Her reply was pure sarcasm.

"No thank you, Doctor. I can manage jumping out of the top floor window by myself. _I'm actually going for a shower_."

"Right," he replied, and he waited at the bottom of the stairs, listening as the water began to run in the bathroom.

* * *

By the time Adelaide came back downstairs, the snowfall outside was growing thick and fast, the Doctor had watched from the window as the night sky was dotted with a swirl of flurrying flakes that dizzied to earth falling softly, adding another blanket to the already heavy snow that covered the street outside. Then he had closed the curtains and switched on the fire that added more glow to the room, and heat that was welcoming on top of the warmth spreading through the house now the radiators were switched on. He had taken off his coat and draped it over an armchair, then sat down on a sofa and waited for Adelaide to return.

When she came back into the front room, she was wrapped in a thick bath robe and her fair damp hair fell to her shoulders.

"I'd offer you something to eat but I've been away a long time, there's nothing in the house," she told him as she went over to a drinks cabinet and opened it up and took out a bottle of red wine and two glasses.

"But I could certainly use something strong tonight. It's not every day you're on Mars, running a mission and then it's attacked and most of your crew perish and then you find yourself back on earth, still with the day of hell going through your mind..."

As she spoke, she had opened the wine and poured it, and then brought two glasses over to the table, set them down and sat on the sofa beside the Doctor.

"I don't think I can ever wipe it from my mind. To me it will always be there, sharp as it is now. Their screams, their suffering..."

" _I did all I could."_

She saw regret in the Doctor's eyes.

"You couldn't have saved us all, Doctor."

"Are you still sorry I saved _you_?" he asked.

She was still looking into his eyes, regarding him over the rim of her glass as she took a sip. Then she set the glass down on the table.

"Perhaps not. At least I know Susie's future isn't affected. That's what matters most."

"It matters to me that I couldn't save the others," he told her, "It doesn't seem enough. It never does. I always try and help, I say I won't, but I do. I have to. I can't walk away when something can be done."

"Even if its wrong?" she asked.

That was a difficult question to answer.

"I don't think saving lives can ever be wrong," the Doctor replied, "Standing back and doing nothing would have been wrong. I know you agree there because I saw how hard you fought to save your crew."

More pain flickered in her eyes – it was clear that Mars would haunt her forever.

"Susie's life is unaffected," she said, as if to confirm it to herself once again, "So my life -"

"Is worth living," the Doctor reminded her, and as he placed his hand on her arm and she turned her head and their eyes met again, she recalled every moment on Mars, every moment since this stranger had arrived stating name rank and intention as _The Doctor, Doctor and fun..._

"You don't need to remind me of that now," she told him, "I know you're right – I thought the future would be changed, clearly not, so yes, I _can_ inspire Susie face to face."

"And you need to remember just how brilliant you are," the Doctor said as he smiled and his eyes sparkled, "You're Adelaide Brooke! You're a legend!"

Despite all that had happened, a smile flickered about her lips.

"You sound like a fan."

"I am a huge fan of yours! More so since I saw how you tried to save the base and everyone in it. If you'd died up there, no one ever would have known about your courage. You're an amazing person. _I mean that_."

His tone had suddenly changed as the look in his eyes intensified. It was a look she had seen before – and perhaps, without thinking, returned, while they had worked together to fight the Flood.

Suddenly the Doctor was leaning closer. He had done it quickly, needing to be closer as emotion burned in his eyes.

"I had to save you," he said quietly, "Not just because you're a pioneer – I had to save you because..." he paused, looked away, then as he looked back at her, he felt it as sure as he saw it in her eyes:

 _If not for the disaster, this would have happened sooner or later..._

"Because..." he fell silent, knowing words were not needed now.

He leant closer, and his first, cautious kiss was welcomed. Then he slid his arms around her and kissed her deeply, pulling back breathlessly to say one last thing:

"I knew it from the moment we first met," he told her, and his eyes were dark with desire, "I knew you were the one."

"You saved me because -"

" _Yes, yes I did,"_ he said softly, and then he cut off her words with a kiss that smothered her mouth, and hoped she wouldn't notice his hands were shaking as he slid his hands over her body and then opened up her bathrobe, because he was shaking hard, he was hit by so many emotions at once that he wanted to cry, so kissing with his eyes closed seemed like the best option. He couldn't have the great captain Brooke thinking the brave man from Gallifrey was an emotional cry baby, not at this moment, because she was made of much stronger stuff than him and he admired her for that, too...

Moments later his tie was off, then his jacket, then his shirt was open and between kisses and passionate embraces and impatient touching and hurried shedding of clothing, they exchanged whispered words.

"I need to feel alive," Adelaide told him.

His breath was hot on her neck as he paused to kiss her.

"There's nothing more life affirming than this," he murmured, and then the Doctor took her in his arms and she caught her breath as his impatient movements were almost too much. He held back as long as he could, but it was desperate and passionate and making love to Adelaide Brooke, the woman of legend, was all that filled his mind when he finally lost control.

Then he rested with her, Mars survivor and Time Lord, together on the sofa while the heating and the fire kept out the cold as the snow fell outside, and together they slept until dawn.

* * *

When Adelaide woke up, she pulled her bathrobe about herself and remembered the heating had been on all night, then she sat up as horrible images played through her mind of the carnage on Mars. She blinked, pushing aside all that had happened as she focussed her gaze on the man she had spent the night with – the time traveller who had saved her. He stood with his back to her, straightening his tie in the mirror, and then he reached for his coat and slipped it on.

She ran her fingers through her hair and got up.

"Don't say goodbye, then."

The Doctor turned around, looking in surprise to see she was already awake.

"I was going to wake you before I left...Or maybe not. You've been through a lot, you need to get some rest."

"And I need to call my family," she replied, "By now the news will start breaking about the destruction of the base."

"And UNIT will want to speak to you because I was involved," he said, "Tell them everything."

She arched an eyebrow.

"Including the part about you spending the night with me on the sofa?"

He laughed.

"You might want to leave _that_ bit out..."

She stepped closer to him, looking at him fondly as she placed her hands on his shoulders.

"Thank you for stopping me last night. As long as I know Susie's future is safe, I'm happy to carry on living."

"I should go," he said apologetically, "You're going to be tied up with interviews about what happened on the base. It's best if I just go now, let things settle down and then -"

"You'll come back?"

The Doctor smiled.

"I hope so," he replied, and then they shared another kiss, and letting go of her made his hearts ache.

"See you soon," he promised, and then he left the house.

Adelaide watched from the window as he entered his blue box, and then with a wheeze and a groan, the ship faded in and out of sight, and vanished.

* * *

As the Tardis shifted peacefully through the inky blackness of space, the Doctor was still thinking on Adelaide Brooke:

He wanted to go back, and he probably would, _one_ day...

But he had been warned of his own death, and for now, all he wanted to do was run and keep running, to live as long as he could before the prophecy came true.

And that was what he did.

 _The Doctor did not return to Adelaide Brooke, and had no clue how the timeline had been altered because of their night together..._


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

For the Twelfth Doctor, two regenerations had been and gone since he had last set eyes on Adelaide Brooke. But as the Tardis moved peacefully through space, he found he was thinking of her – he had been thinking of the past a lot lately since he had realised someone was missing from his life – but his missing person was _not_ the former commander of the Mars mission.

 _The person he missed was Clara Oswald, and she was just a story now._

His twin hearts felt pained as he struggled to remember her – even her story was fading now, and only seemed to come back to him when he stood alone in his silent Tardis and played his guitar, a slow, sad tune he had named _Clara_.

He was sure he would know her if he saw her again.

Or perhaps he had already met her, and forgotten her face...

Yet she seemed impossible to forget.

 _Those thoughts hung about in the air like ghosts, felt but not seen and ever out of tangible reach._

It was during this time, as he had set down his guitar and turned back to the controls of his Tardis that his thoughts had shifted to others he had known, some long ago, whose faces he could still recall.

 _Adelaide Brooke was unforgettable._

He had known before he met her in his Tenth life that she had been remarkable for her achievements, but on meeting her and watching her fight to save her crew and the base...Oh, she had been magnificent... He felt a sting of guilt as he recalled being back in that other life, when he was young and handsome and yet to take on the final battle with the Master that would see his body destroyed by a fatal dose of radiation. Back then, he had still had choices.

He _could_ have stayed with Adelaide.

He could have asked her to go with him, and they could have seen the stars together – he had travelled for many years before returning to the Ood's home planet to learn of the shocking news of the Master's return. He had simply run and kept on running, trying to avoid his destiny – but he had travelled for many years before returning to that fateful event.

Those years could have been spent with Adelaide – at least, a few of them...

He still felt that regret now, in his Twelfth lifetime.

 _So much regret._

Then he had no more time to think on the past as the Tardis lurched and the engines groaned. The Doctor clutched at the console as his guitar fell heavily to the floor as he tried to regain control but it was too late – the Tardis was landing. He hadn't asked her to land any where but it seemed she had made her own choice in the matter...

* * *

Moments later, the Doctor opened up the Tardis door and stepped out. He looked left and right, then out through a viewing port showing inky starlit space.

 _This was a ship..._

The Tardis had landed in the middle of a corridor on board a ship, and going by the distinctive honeycomb shaped corridors and the illuminated maps on the wall, he guessed this was an early Earth built light speed ship...

"Identify yourself!" a woman said sharply.

The Doctor turned to see a female security guard aiming a laser pistol at him.

He smiled nervously.

"I'm the Doctor," he said, "I landed my ship inside yours by accident. May I speak to your Captain?"

The woman hit a button on a hand held device.

"Did you hear that, ma'am?" she asked, "I can confirm it's a blue box. _And_ he said he's the Doctor."

"Bring him to me right now, please," the voice replied, and then the channel closed.

The woman stepped back and gestured with her gun, and he started walking, feeling uneasy to think that weapon was still trained on him.

"I'm guessing this is the last quarter of the twenty first century and this is the first light speed ship? Does that mean the Captain is Susie Fontana Brooke?" he asked.

They came to a doorway. As the guard activated it, he still wished she wasn't pointing that gun at him.

"Why won't you answer questions about your Captain?"

"Because you can ask her yourself, she's been waiting to meet you for a long time," the guard replied, and the door opened and he went inside, and it promptly closed behind him once more.

* * *

The room was clearly a private living space, and Captain Susie Fontana Brooke was in her uniform and standing by a viewing port, he noticed she looked lean and strong like her grandmother, and her tied back hair was almost her same fair shade.

"So, you're the Doctor," she said, and her voice was flat, with no hint of emotion about it as she continued to stand there with her back to him, and that made him wonder why he was getting such a cold reception...

"Yes, I am. It's great to meet you!"

He smiled.

She turned around, and the frosty look in her eyes was enough to make his smile fade.

"You don't seem pleased to see me? I'm the man who saved your Grandmother from Bowie Base One after the attack by the Flood."

"She told me all about it," Susie replied, and then she walked over to the Doctor, looking at him with a gaze of pure ice, "I learned a lot from my Grandmother," she told him as anger crept into her voice, "And thanks to links she established with Unit after _you_ deserted her -"

" _Deserted?_ Excuse me?"

"After you left and _never_ returned," Susie continued icily, "Your prediction came true. Yes, she inspired me to explore the stars. It was my destiny to do so. But thanks to her involvement with you, she established some links at Unit, and they were able to tell her all she wanted to know about you, Doctor. She did a lot of research. And I don't doubt you've saved the Earth many times from hostile alien threat, and that should be applauded. But I can _never_ condone what you did to my Grandmother!"

The Doctors eyes widened in alarm.

"I didn't do anything to her! I _saved_ her, in fact me and her grew rather close, albeit for a very _short_ while -"

" _Shut up!"_

He blinked.

"That's usually _my_ line. Why are you looking at me like that, why the daggers, Susie?"

She looked at him for a moment, taking in every detail of his face, his hair, the fine cut of his suit, and then she spoke again.

"Obviously you've regenerated. It doesn't change the fact that you're still the Doctor – the man with many faces and only one name, the man who cheats death and lives on in new guises. Is that why you did it to her, because you knew the end was coming and it would mean all change for you? Was that an easy way to forget about her?"

He wasn't sure why, but her words were starting to worry him.

"What is it I'm supposed to have done?" he asked, "Because I remember my Tenth lifetime well. I remember your Grandmother well. I never would have harmed her. I told you, I saved her!"

" _You left her."_

That had sounded like a bitter accusation.

"If you know about what happened between me and your grandmother – well, the _other_ Doctor and your Grandmother, I'm sorry that he never went back for her. But back then he had been told he was going to die, and he was afraid. So he did what the Doctor always does. He got into his Tardis and ran and kept running. He was trying to cheat fate. He thought if he never stayed still, the prophecy wouldn't come about."

His explanation cut no ice with Susie, who glared at him as she spelled out facts he needed to know:  
 _"The Doctor slept with my Grandmother and went off in his Tardis not caring about what he had done! Mid twenty first century HRT was notorious for its side effects, and I'm not talking about the way it slowed down the ageing process. It restored fertility as well! You – I mean him, the other Doctor, got her pregnant and left and never came back!"_

The Doctor stared at her in shock.

"She...I...I mean Adelaide...had a baby... _mine_?" he said in a hushed voice.

"Her name's Steffi," she replied, "She's a year younger than me. My Grandmother named her after a member of her crew on the Mars base, a woman who died when the Flood came in, she died watching a film of her kids back on Earth. She always said that was one of the worst memories of all despite everything else she witnessed – seeing a mother dying, knowing she's never going to see her kids again. So she called your daughter Steffi."

"Does she have two hearts?"

It was all he could think to say, but his question made anger blaze in Susie's eyes.

" _Have you passed on your time lord genetics?_ Is that _all_ you care about? Yes, she _does_ have two hearts. And she misses her mother. Adelaide died when Steffi was nineteen. How could you be so selfish, why did you get my Grandmother pregnant and just leave her to it after everything she went through on Mars? Oh, she could cope because she was strong, but you said you'd come back and you _never_ did!"

The Doctor fell silent, feeling stunned as he took in all she had said.

"Please believe me, I had no idea," he promised her as he hoped he was saying the right thing, "If I'd known back then I would have gone straight back to her – I had many years before the prophecy came about, I could have spent those years with her! I would have! _I didn't know!_ "

His eyes had filled with tears.

Susie was unmoved by his show of emotion.

"The best thing you can do," she said to him, "Is to get back in your blue box and fly away and never trouble my family again. We don't need you!"

She turned her back and looked once again to the view of starlit space.

" _Get off my ship, Doctor."_

He stood there for a moment, wanting to speak but still struggling to find the right words. Somewhere he had a coat and in that pocket was a set of cards that Clara had written out for him to use, prompts to help him say the right thing in difficult situations.

 _But he was sure she hadn't written out a card for this._

 _And if Clara was just a story, perhaps there were no cards anyway..._

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, and she gave no reply.

The Doctor turned around and hit the panel beside the door and it swung open, and he left the room. The guard who was waiting outside raised her gun and called to the Captain.

"Let him go," Susie said, glancing over her shoulder and then turning back to the viewing port, "He's leaving."

* * *

The Doctor walked quickly back up the corridor, hurrying back to the Tardis, and once he was inside he closed the door heavily and leaned against it, pausing for breath as he closed his eyes and saw her face in his mind and his twin hearts ached for all he had lost.

Of _course_ he would have gone back if he had known! He had wanted to go back for her anyway, but he had been scared and too much running meant not much looking back and too much forgetting...

" _I have to put this right,"_ he said under his breath, and he went over to the console and took the Tardis into flight, away from the ship, out into deep space, set on a course for Earth, back to 2064, where Susie was six and Steffi would be five years old, and Adelaide Brooke was still alive...

* * *

He landed the Tardis putting all his faith in the old girl to guide him. He had no clue where Adelaide would be living back then, but he was sure she would have moved away from her home in the city, because pollution was terrible and the countryside was the best place to raise a child, away from the smog.

 _The Tardis knew exactly where to land._

The Doctor stepped out beneath the shade of a tree and looked across a quiet road to a house with a thatched roof and an old fashioned garden filled with roses and lavender. A low stone wall ran around the property so he didn't bother walking around to the gate, instead stepping over the wall, then over a bright flower bed that was still blooming in late August, and then he reached the path that led up to the front door.

It was then he paused, taking in a deep breath to steady his nerves as he wondered how she would react to seeing him again. He wanted to make this right, to explain everything, and then he wanted to go back to meet with Susie and this time, hopefully receive a better welcome that would prove he had set the record straight.

As he reached the front door, it suddenly occurred to him that she would most likely not know he was the Doctor. Susie had said her mother had learned much about him from Unit – but that didn't mean she knew of all his identities. She seemed to understand that he could regenerate, but until he had offered the information, she had assumed he was simply an intruder on board the ship. So if Susie had not known his face...perhaps neither did Adelaide.

 _It was worth a shot._

He rang the doorbell.

As the door was opened, he stared at her and she looked back at him.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

And the Doctor lost his nerve, deciding to weave an elaborate story of pretending to be a friend of the Doctor's who had been asked to give her a message, just wouldn't work. Looking into her eyes, seeing her again, only confirmed to him all he remembered and more about Adelaide:

She was a strong and intelligent woman, so strong that she wouldn't cave in and weep over her lost love. She was more likely to interrogate him than offer him tea and ask a few polite questions...

"I'm...from Unit," he said, pulling out his psychic paper and flashing it as the thought came to mind that this was a bad idea because if she gave his description to Unit, they would most likely pull out a picture and say, _this is the Doctor, his latest face.._.Oh, this could end badly, he was feeling it now...

"Unit?" She stepped back and opened the door wider and invited him inside.

* * *

The Doctor stepped into the cottage with its floral walls and oak beam ceilings, making a mental note he would have to duck down going through doorways because this place had low ceilings, and then Adelaide asked him to follow her, and she led him through to a comfortable front room, gestured to a sofa by a leaded window, and he sat down and so did she, in the arm chair nearby, and then she looked at him intently.

"It's been so long since I heard from your people! Please tell me, is there any news on the Doctor?"

For all Susie has said, he saw no anger in Adelaide's eyes. Instead he saw worry.

"Is he still alive? I need to know, I need to know for my sake and our daughters, _is_ he still alive, Mr..."

"Call me Basil," he said quickly, "Just... _Basil from Unit_. Yes, the Doctor is alive and out there somewhere. And I'm sure he would get in touch with you if he could."

"But he said he was going to die -"

"We have a theory that perhaps he's travelling far away to try and avoid that coming about," he told her, "Please don't think for one moment the Doctor would have deliberately left you and your daughter. If he knew he was a father, he would be back here and by your side, I swear he would, he _really_ would..."

He looked into her eyes. She looked intently at him, getting the oddest feeling they had met somewhere before, but she just couldn't place him...

"She so wants to see her father, and so do I," she said quietly, and as her gaze turned to the picture on the wall above the fireplace, the Doctor studied the image of the little girl smiling in the garden with a slightly older child beside her, and his hearts skipped a beat as he blinked away tears he couldn't allow her to see:

The older, fair haired girl was obviously Susie. The smaller, dark haired girl beside her was definitely the Doctor's child – she had deep brown eyes just like his Tenth self...

That was the moment he made his choice as he thought of the child he had never known about:

 _This had to change, and he was going to change it, and to hell with the consequences...It was clear Adelaide still loved the Doctor, and he needed to know that. This needed to be put right, because now his own twin hearts were aching for missing memories and this time they did not concern a story of a woman called Clara, instead it concerned Adelaide and a daughter he had never known..._

"I'm sorry I have no new information for you," he said quickly as he rose from his seat, "I just wanted to stop by and assure you that the Doctor is out there somewhere – and I'm going to try all I can to find him for you."

"Thank you," she said, and she got up too and they walked together to the front door. As he opened it and stepped outside, the Doctor's plan was already coming together and he knew the line had been crossed and he wasn't about to step back now.

"Adelaide..."

She looked at him.

"This may not make sense now, and please don't repeat this to anyone – I'm telling you this because you were the woman who ran the Mars mission, because I know of your excellent record of reliability...but this is off the record and must stay that way until the time is right."

His voice had become hushed and the look in his eyes grown intense.

"What _is_ this about?" she demanded, and he replied right away, speaking quietly as he shared a secret:

"Two years ago an alien vessel crash landed about seven miles south of here. The wreckage was taken to a Unit research base and they managed to salvage something important. It's a decontamination unit designed to lift out and safely absorb high levels of radiation. It won't be a cure but it will make a difference. The Tardis can do the rest – it has a replication device capable of creating everything he's going to need to get by for as long as it works. This makes no sense now but one day it will. When it does, call Unit and tell them the Doctor needs to use the decontamination machine. They will know what you're talking about."

"Radiation?" she exclaimed, "I don't understand – I demand you tell me everything!"

"I can't," he replied apologetically, "You already know too much. Just trust me, Adelaide – he's going to need it. Now I'm off to find him. Don't forget what I've told you."

Then he turned away and walked up the path, closed the gate and crossed the road.

* * *

He heard her calling his name as she ran down the path, but by then he had cut through bushes out of sight, where he watched and waited. Once she had gone back into the house, he went back the way he came, taking the long way around to get back to his Tardis.

Once inside, he threw a lever and the Tardis took flight, then the Doctor stood alone in the console room, thinking back, way back - back to the days before the end of his Tenth life, as he wondered at which point in that tight time line, he ought to catch up with his former self and tell him about Adelaide and Steffi...

 _It had to be done._

He knew this was dangerous territory, to play around with his own past, but he felt he had no choice – he recalled how he had loved Adelaide back then, and he knew would never forget the face of his own daughter, and if he had his way, he would soon have many memories of a rewritten past to look back on:

 _There was no backing out now._

 _The plan was a dangerous one, but he was determined to carry it out..._


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

As the Tardis travelled on and the Twelfth Doctor stood at the console in silence, he closed his eyes for a moment as he tried to drag out memories that refused to draw closer. As he kept his mind set on the choice he had made, he turned his ice blue eyes away from the controls and fixed his gaze at the Tardis wall as he thought again of the girl who was just a story:

 _He had loved her – in that story._

 _But if it was just a story, why did he feel such pain now?_

 _How could he live with pain like that, a pain that threatened to split his twin hearts into bloody slices?_

It hurt too much to be just a story, and if he had to live with pain like that...

Perhaps there was no harm in meddling with the past, because it could bring about a different outcome for his own existence.

 _Maybe after this, the Doctor wouldn't exist at all._

Maybe he was subconsciously trying to wipe out his own future to spare himself the grief, and to hell with every version of him that was supposed to follow after his Tenth self perished.

Maybe _that_ was what it was about...

Yet he didn't feel suicidal, just weary. As weary as a man who had spent thirty billion years punching a hole through a wall to escape from a prison. But if all that was just a story, _why_ did it seem so real?

 _He felt weary to his soul..._

Then the Tardis landed, and he paused, feeling heavy in his hearts. In his mind the story jumped to life as the Raven swooped low and pierced the soul of Clara Oswald, the girl in the story. His mind was set on her, on finding her again, even if he couldn't recall her face. The story was fading out again too, and that scared him, because he never wanted to forget. He made a decision that later, after his meeting with his former self, once he was back in the Tardis he would play more music, because that seemed to keep the story alive in his memory...

As the Doctor turned from the console, he felt oddly sad to be revisiting a place where he remembered so much, this was the Ood home planet, and he had arrived just before his former self had finally returned to answer the call of the Ood.

It had been a tough choice – the matter of exactly _when_ to catch up with his tenth self, but after much deliberating it had seemed to make sense to leave the timeline preserved, for the sake of all the dangers and threats the Doctor had fought against, for all the times he had protected the earth. Those events had to remain unchanged.

For the rest, mainly his own future lives – including the one he was living right now - he felt a sense of detached numbness. That numb sensation had been there on and off as a respite from the pain of recalling the girl from the story and he didn't consider it his enemy, because sometimes it was better to feel nothing than to suffer pain that cut too deep.

It was time to go outside, and he had no idea if he was doing the right thing – the best outcome would be, he would hand himself many happy memories of a family he had previously known nothing about, and as for the downside...he didn't want to think about that. His younger self needed to know about his family, he needed to see them. _There had been enough memories forgotten and becoming stories, and he didn't want Adelaide Brooke and Steffi to become just another story..._

The Doctor left the console room, grabbed a long, thick winter coat and threw it on over his suit, neglected to button it up and walked over to the Tardis door and stepped outside.

* * *

The wind was picking up, carrying with it the last flakes of a snow fall. Snow covered the ground and in the distance, the Ood city was looking taller and much more advanced that it should have been, considering the short decades that had passed by since the Ood had won their liberation from slavery.

He stood there, hands in the pockets of an open coat that billowed back in the breeze as the air became sharp and icy, and looked to the city. Then he turned his head, and as the last flakes of snow drifted down and settled in his greying hair and the dark shoulders of his coat, he followed the direction of the sound of an arriving Tardis, then saw the outline, then its image faded in and out. and it finally solidified.

The door of the other Tardis opened, and his Tenth self stepped out, then he stepped back and aimed an automatic locking device at the door, it bleeped, and the door locked.

"Like a car!" his Tenth self exclaimed, and he looked to the tall, grey haired man who stood beside a Tardis of his own, and his smile faded as he took off a floral garland he wore about his neck and then took off his sunglasses and stared at him in surprise.

" _You're another Doctor?"_

The older man nodded and then he walked over to his younger self and gestured to the other Tardis.

" _You'd better step back inside. We need to talk."_

The Tenth Doctor unlocked the door with the device, and he led the way inside.

* * *

Stepping into the Tardis – this former Tardis from a former lifetime, brought many memories back to the Doctor, memories of another lifetime, but the only face of the companions he recalled that remained elusive to him was that of the girl called Clara.

As the door closed behind them, he abandoned thoughts of the girl in the story and turned to his younger self.

"You're me?" the Tenth Doctor exclaimed, and then he smiled, "It's good to meet you – what number are you – no wait...better not tell me. It's future.. have to think of the timeline...Oh, maybe you could tell me about this prophecy thing...about _he will knock four times._..Is there any way I can get out of that? Because I _really_ don't want to go."

He smiled again, looking at him hopefully, but as the older Doctor's expression remained grave, his smile faded.

"Maybe not..probably for the best...What brings you here?"

"Adelaide Brooke," he replied, " _She_ brings me here, Doctor. You walked away and never went back and you missed out on quite a lot."

The younger Doctor's dark eyes widened.

"I missed out? On what?"

The Twelfth Doctor paused for a moment, then he drew in a breath, met the gaze of his younger self and spelled it out plainly, because there was no easy way to do this and even if there had been, he was sure he was naturally too blunt and truthful to find the tact to be gentle with his words.

He stepped closer to him.

"Adelaide had a body that was very youthful for her years – partly down to her physical fitness and partly thanks to new generation hormone replacement therapy. She fell pregnant because of you and had a daughter, who she named Steffi, after one of her fallen colleagues from Bowie Base One. And I don't think she ever gave up on the idea that you might come back for her. _But you didn't._ She raised Steffi and then she died a few years later. I guess she always hoped you would return, that was the impression I got from her when I passed by and decided to briefly drop in. I saw a picture of your daughter at the age of five – she looks a lot like you. I told Adelaide was from Unit, she didn't know the truth."

The Doctor's dark eyes grew wider as he stared at his older self.

"No, it's got to be a mistake...I can't have a family I don't know about -"

"We both know, Doctor, we both remember how our family died many years ago, and I also remember your pain at Jenny's death. I know you associate being a father with pain and loss but Steffi is just _fine_. She grows up okay! Except that she never knows her father because _you_ never went back."

The Tenth Doctor's face paled. He ran his fingers through his hair and then shook his head, looking back to his future self with a bewildered expression.

"I had no idea! I swear, if I'd known, I _would_ have gone back! I often think about Adelaide. But these days it seems all I do is run, I keep travelling, I've been travelling for years to try and avoid the end! I'm afraid of the prophecy."

As he said those words, the Twelfth Doctor fell silent, looking to the floor for a moment as he recalled all his younger self was about to endure – the battle with the Master, the radiation that would kill him... he was afraid to go, and he had every right to be – his death would be painful and lonely...

He looked up once more and met his gaze and spoke plainly, holding nothing back:

"I think I lost someone called Clara. I can't be sure, because she might just be a story, she feels like a story -"

" _Clara?"_

The Twelfth Doctor looked at him in surprise.

"You know of her?"

The Tenth Doctor hesitated, stepping closer to his future self as he looked into his eyes. He recalled meeting Clara along with his Eleventh self when they had saved Gallifrey – and Clara wasn't easy to forget, yet there was something...right at the back of this other Doctor's eyes that only another Time Lord could see...

His expression changed to surprise.

"You've had a memory wipe?"

The older Doctor looked at him blankly.

"I'd know."

"But it's a memory wipe! And, using Time Lord technology, if I'm not mistaken! _Why_ would you do that?"

"Do what?" Twelve said.

"Why would you use your own technology to wipe out all those memories?"

"Perhaps I didn't. Maybe she is just a story."

The Tenth Doctor paused, then he spoke cautiously, guessing there had to be circumstances around this memory wipe, and perhaps it was best left undisturbed, at least until he knew the full story...

"Maybe she is," he replied, "And she is _definitely_ a story you need to tell me one day. But back to me – why didn't you catch up with me a few years back, when I was travelling alone? I've been everywhere -"

"Running from your fate."

He didn't deny it.

"Perhaps, yes. But why wait until now?"

The Doctor looked at his younger self and said nothing for a moment, knowing soon he would meet with the Ood, and learn of the Master''s threat to the Earth. _His time was shorter than he knew..._

"All I can tell you is this: When the end is near, when you've said your goodbyes, don't go back to the Powell Estate, you don't need to see Rose again, she's not coming back any time soon. Go forward five years after you left Adelaide Brooke back on Earth. I'm sure Adelaide will be more than capable of helping you even with her hands full with a demanding young human to nurture. Just do it, return to her, and tell her what's happened, tell her _exactly_ what's happened to you. She can help."

The Tenth Doctor's expression changed as a flicker of fear showed in his dark eyes.

"Is this it? Is the end coming soon, is that why you told me, Doctor?"

The Doctor had leant over the Tardis and keyed in a flight plan, then he turned back to his younger self.

"It's all stored and ready when you are – that flight plan will take you to Adelaide. But don't go until the battle is over. I had to take this to a certain part of your time line to be sure nothing is changed – especially the safety of Earth. _And now I'm leaving_."

He turned away and headed for the door.

"You can't just leave!" he exclaimed, and ran after him, as the door swung shut behind his older self, he wrenched it open and stepped out into the snow, in time to see the other Doctor, his coat open despite the cold, walking back to his own Tardis.

* * *

" _You can't just leave!"_ he called again.

As the other Doctor reached his Tardis and turned back, snow started to fall once more. It was then, as the Tenth Doctor saw his older self standing there, as the chill wind blew back his open coat, that a thought hit him:

" _You don't even care how cold it is..."_ he murmured, _"It's like you can't feel it...Or you don't even care if you can feel it..."_

The older Doctor turned to open the door of his Tardis.

"Wait," his Tenth self called, and he turned back again.

"I think you need my help," he said to him, "There's something wrong, I know there is...Let me help you."

But the older man in the dark suit who cared nothing for the cold just shook his head, and then he stepped into his Tardis and closed the door, and then the engine started up and as snow was sent about in a whipped up whirl about the fading blue box, his Tardis vanished from sight.

The Tenth Doctor stood there staring at the spot where the future Doctor's Tardis had stood as he wondered what was wrong with the other Doctor, a man whose mind had been wiped of all recollection of Clara – a man who seemed so numbed that he didn't seem to care that he couldn't even feel the cold on this icy planet...

Then he looked to the distance and saw Ood Sigma approaching, and closed the door of his Tardis and began to walk over to meet him, his thoughts now with the Ood and the call that he had ignored for so very long...

* * *

As he travelled on through space, the Doctor stood alone in the console room still feeling as if Clara was a ghost, there yet unseen, out of his reach. Believing in her would be as crazy as believing in a fairytale. But his younger self had said his memory had been wiped. He was sure if it had, he would at least remember the reason for it...all the rest was just a story...

 _And as for his younger self, nothing had changed yet._

He placed his hands on the sleek console and closed his eyes, waiting for new memories to hit him, to slam into place and with them, a cascade of recollections that would flow at a pace that made him unsteady. He would see it all, the changes, he would feel every emotion he had felt then, remembered every moment of an altered past...

 _But not yet._

 _It was not happening yet._

So far his recollections remained the same, the Tenth Doctor was about to Battle with Master, and set up a chain of events that would see him absorb the radiation. If he thought too much about it, he swore he could still recall the pain of that fatal dose, despite the fact that he was number Twelve and it had happened two lifetimes ago. That pain was very real and he hoped that his plan to change the rest of it wouldn't mean more memories of pain - he had tried to set it out so that perhaps he would gain some time to be with his family, perhaps he would remember a few years with Adelaide and Steffi...

And then perhaps, when his Tenth self was gone, maybe then _he_ could introduce himself all over again in this altered timeline, be a husband to Adelaide and a father to Steffi...

 _Yes, that would push aside his memories of the girl in the story._

 _At least, he hoped it would._

He knew he was partly acting out of selfishness, but the Doctor had suffered such pain over this misty memory of a story of a girl called Clara that he was almost ready to give up and end his life just to get away from the misery.

He knew he was being reckless to tinker with the timeline, and he didn't care about it either, not really, not when all he wanted to do was for the pain to stop.

His younger self had been right – he _did_ need his help, but he wasn't going to admit that unless he had to...

The Tardis travelled on through time, and the Twelfth Doctor waited, hoping for new memories to replace old ones, new memories that would bring a spark of hope into his now dark existence...


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The words of his younger self had stayed with him, even though he was where he needed to be now – far out in space, travelling, just the Doctor and his Tardis and all of time and space.

The Tenth Doctor had told him that he thought he needed his help.

 _Maybe he did._

Perhaps what ever had happened to put the story of Clara inside his head had caused him so much misery that he was almost hoping for his own future to be wiped out by changing the past :

 _No future, no Clara._

 _No Clara, no pain..._

He dismissed that thought as the looked at the controls and wondered on his next move – he would have to wait for the Doctor to follow his instructions before he felt any kind of change. And then he would have to pay a visit and explain to him that in the interests of Earth, the timeline had to be kept safe. He would regenerate eventually, and then he needed move on and take up the path his Eleventh self was destined to take in order to keep others safe.

It was starting to worry him that he cared more about others involved than he did about himself – yes, the other Doctor had hit on something truthful. Perhaps it was the way he had walked through the snow, not caring about the cold because he was too numb to feel it. Maybe _that_ had given it away...

He straightened up and turned from the console, looked to the open Tardis doors and watched as space and twinkling starlight passed by.

The Doctor's thoughts were caught in a thorny place between the need to make his past better and a temptation to sit back and hope this would change everything, even if it meant wiping out his own future lives.

He knew he was in a bad place, he had been ever since he had woken up feeling disoriented and confused and with the story of Clara stuck inside his head.

Those memory wiping devices worked fine on humans – they were such primitive creatures. _But to use one on a Time Lord?_ If he had suffered having his memory wiped, it could prove disastrous for one so old whose body was used to retaining memories, all memories stayed, even if they faded out after regeneration, they came back eventually.

 _A Time Lord's mind was not meant to have a great chunk of recollections burned out_. He was well aware if the Tenth Doctor was right and the memory wipe had been real, it could mean he was in a downward spiral of slowly coming mentally undone as his mind struggled to cope with what had happened to it – he could go insane, it was a real possibility...

" _Have you remembered my face yet?"_

As she asked that question, a gentle hand rested on the sleeve of his jacket and he felt the weight of it, that touch was real..

The Doctor gave a gasp and turned around, but no one was there.

"You're not real," he whispered, his eyes wide as his twin hearts hammered, "You're just a story!"

And the Tardis gave off its usual hum as he stood there alone, waiting for the ghost to return, wondering if this was another sign that perhaps he was right, perhaps he _was_ going insane...

But if he was, that would mean something had caused it, something had affected his mind to bring it about, indicating the memory wipe had actually happened. And if that had happened, it could only mean one thing:

 _Clara Oswald was not just a story..._

Anger burned in his blue eyes as he looked again to the open Tardis doors, as his gaze reflected the depth of star lit space:

 _If she was not a story, if he all he recalled was true, why had his love for her caused him such pain that he had gone so far as to allow his own memory to be burnt out?_ That question needed an answer, but for now, all he could do was wait for other memories to fall into place, new memories of what he hoped would be happier times in a former life, when his Tenth self changed his own fate...

* * *

On Earth, it was a cold winter's night and the snow had started to fall. As she closed the curtains and turned back to the warmth of the bedroom, for a brief moment, although she was far from the town and the pollution, and this place in the country was perfect to raise a child, she could not help but feel haunted by the memory of the Doctor and his Tardis and how he had saved her from her fate on Mars...

Adelaide wondered how the world could keep on turning day after day, in the way it always had, how life could go on, as if nothing had happened. The Mars base was a memory now, a story she would pass down to Susie, and one day to Steffi, too. That was funny, she had never thought of it that way before, but she did now:

 _Memories, in the end, became stories..._

But her memory of the Doctor and that snowy night when he had landed the Tardis and opened the door and she had found herself back on Earth, was a memory she couldn't ever let go of, not only because of the colleagues she had lost when the Flood attacked, but because the Doctor had left her with a reminder that would last forever...and that reminder was Steffi, her little girl who was five years old and sleeping on her back in her bed, her eyes were closed tightly, leaving her mother to only wonder at the dreams that went on in the mind of the half Time Lord child whose hair was as dark as her eyes - as dark as her father's. She was seeing more of the Doctor in Steffi with every passing day.

Adelaide smiled.

"What ever you're dreaming about," she said softly, "I hope it's wonderful."

And then she dimmed the night light and quietly left the room, leaving her child to sleep peacefully.

Adelaide went back downstairs, it was almost eight o'clock and she was planning to spend a quiet evening by the fire with the TV on low volume, as she tried to find something distracting to watch, anything to keep her mind from drifting back to the past. She thought back to the man who had turned up on her doorstep in the summer, who had given her information about the salvaged space vessel and told her to call Unit when the time was right... He had seemed to know so much, and there was something about him, something that she couldn't quite work out...it was almost as if there had been so much more to that man – he _still_ seemed familiar...

* * *

The clock at the end of the hallway chimed the hour just as she passed it and went into the brightly lit kitchen to make some tea. As Adelaide switched on the kettle she glanced out of the window, beyond her reflection the night looked black and the snow seemed stark against it as more snow fell, the flurry growing thicker. Adelaide opened the window and looked out into the garden, watching as the snow fell silently and then turned her eyes skyward. _As a child she had looked to the skies and encountered the Dalek, she had thought of that encounter for many years whilst embarking on a career that would lead her to Mars._

But now when she looked to the skies, she thought instead of _another_ alien life form – the man called the Doctor, the man in the blue box. She could still see him in her mind, sharp as yesterday:

 _Standing there with his back to her as he straightened his tie and then put on his long brown coat, then he had turned around and looked at her and she had taken in every detail of his face, knowing the man who had saved her from the Flood and then from death by her own hand was a man who would be firmly in her heart forever..._

She had never stopped loving him, even when the years had gone by and the child she had not expected to have had looked more like him with every passing day. Sometimes she looked at Steffi and felt like a crack in her heart caused by his absence would always be sealed painlessly by the love she felt when she looked into her child's eyes.

She didn't know if the Doctor had been lying when he promised to return – perhaps he had meant what he said, maybe something had happened to prevent his return – after all, he had turned up on Mars on that fateful day and that had been unplanned. Maybe he walked into trouble all the time, he seemed to have a clear head in a crisis as if he was used to dangerous situations, and from what she had learned from Unit, the Doctor had been involved in saving the Earth from alien threat many documented times over the years. So perhaps he did have a habit of causing trouble.

She thought of how he had got her into trouble and then left, and again she recalled his face, his smile, the look in his eyes, and she thought of Steffi and smiled.

The kettle hit boiling point and the button popped up as steam spewed from the spout. The air slipping in through the open window brought a blast of ice with it, and Adelaide closed the window and turned back to the kettle.

 _And the doorbell rang._

She turned towards the kitchen doorway, listening as the caller rang the bell again and again, the ring was one long press followed by a pause and then another, and another.

"Alright, I'm coming!" she said, wondering who would be calling at this time in the evening – she hadn't made any plans for visitors, and her place was far out in the countryside, and not many people had her address, a precaution she had taken on the advice of Unit, to protect her half alien daughter...

As she left the kitchen, she found she was recalling self defence techniques she had learned many years before – she knew how to deal with hostility. The doorbell rang again, and she hurried to answer it and slipped on the safety chain, then drew back the bolts and finally opened the door a fraction.

" _Adelaide..."_

She caught her breath at the sight of him, feeling stunned and overwhelmed with emotions that ran from anger at his absence to a wave of love that washed through her heart:

 _It was the Doctor. It really was him, after five long years, he was leaning against the door frame, he looked exhausted and his dark eyes burned with intensity that took her by surprise..._

She reached for the chain, released it and opened up the door, and the Doctor staggered in, then leant against the wall, standing there in the hallway with snowflakes in his dark hair. Then he unbuttoned his long brown coat and opened it up, pausing to loosen his tie as he took a breath, and it was then she noticed he was perspiring, which was odd, because it was snowing outside...

Adelaide couldn't speak. She wanted to, but seeing him standing there after so long, after wondering when he would return and then thinking perhaps he never would, all she could do was stand and stare at the man who stood before her leaning against the wall in the hallway, dark shadows hung under his eyes, perspiration shone on his face, he looked terrible, but at the same time, it was still wonderful simply to see him again after five long years.

"Adelaide..." he said again, and his dark eyes glazed with tears as he looked at her and took in the sight of her standing before him, not in the uniform she had worn as head of the Mars mission, now she wore a soft blue jumper and dark jeans, her hair was tied back and still the same fair shade of soft blonde, and time had been good to her, she still looked as youthful for her age as she had five years before...

 _And she was the mother of his child._

His twin hearts felt like breaking as he thought of the radiation he had absorbed, something that could only mean the end of him, and now he understood why his future self had told him to visit her now, because he knew he wouldn't last much longer, and all he could think of was the years he had spent alone, running from his fate. _Years he could have spent with Adelaide and Steffi..._

"I know about the baby, I wanted to come back before but I didn't find out until later on...you _have_ to believe me, I meant to come back sooner. I would have come back..." he reached for her as emotion choked his voice.

" _I love you both!"_ he said, and as she embraced him, the Doctor clung to her and wept.

* * *

It was a long while before the Doctor and Adelaide broke off from their embrace. When they finally did, she led him through to the front room where he sat down heavily, resting against the sofa like all his strength was gone. It was then as she looked at him she wondered what exactly had happened – this was an emotional reunion, but he looked physically shattered...

"It's such a long story," he said to her, "But I need to explain, I want to tell you everything..." he paused, felt a flicker of pain shoot through his body and managed not to let it reflect in his eyes as he shifted in his seat and breathed out through the discomfort, "I need to tell you so much -"

"And you need to take your time," she told him, "I'm going to make some tea, then we can sit together and you can tell me everything. I need to know everything, because five years is a long time."

Then Adelaide left the room.

The Doctor's eyes widened as he felt a flash of panic on watching her leave.

" _Time?"_ he whispered, _"I don't even know how much of that I've got left!"_

* * *

When Adelaide returned, she set the tea on the table and sat beside him, then looked at him intently.

"I'm listening, Doctor."

He looked back at her, thought of his travels and the years he had wasted, years he could have spent with her before the end had come...

"It's not as if I had a choice," he began, "I didn't know about the baby until I met another version of me – a future version. He told me to leave the timeline unchanged, to preserve all I was meant to do in this life to protect Earth. So I did. But I didn't realise that would mean I spent years travelling alone, years I could have been with you before it happened..."

He fell silent as he blinked away tears, and the touch of her hand as she reminded him of her closeness with the gesture eased his sadness enough to continue explaining, "This isn't easy, Adelaide...I have to tell you something, it's about what's happened to me...I had this old enemy, the Master. I thought he was dead, but he was resurrected and I had to stop him. It cost me everything and -"

" _Mummy?"_

As Adelaide looked to the open doorway, so did the Doctor, and his eyes filled with warmth as he smiled and fought back his tears at the sight of five year old Steffi Brooke, standing there in a thick lilac night gown as her long dark hair hung to her shoulders. She looked at him, and the shade of her eyes matched his own.

"Who are you?" she asked as she blinked away sleep.

For once, the usually composed Adelaide found herself struggling to hold back from letting her tears show. She smiled at her daughter.

"Remember we talked about your father? And I showed you pictures of him? Well, this is your father. He's come home at last."

Steffi's eyes widened in surprise, then her face lit up in a smile and she ran over to the sofa with her arms outstretched. As she hugged him, the Doctor felt the damage from the radiation seem to shake his bones as if they were breaking, but nothing could steal his joy at meeting his child for the first time.

He let go of her and she looked at him excitedly.

"Are you going to stay, Daddy?"

 _Daddy._ He hadn't expected that. Clearly, Adelaide had made sure their child knew all about her father, talking of him to make sure she remembered him even though until today, he had just been a story...

"Well..." the Doctor began, "I hope so. I may not be able to stay for long, I need to talk to your Mummy about that. A lot has happened."

And he glanced to Adelaide, who caught the look in his eyes and gave a slight nod, understanding that obviously, the Doctor had much more to say, and it was not to be said in front of Steffi.

"I promise I'll try and stay as long as I can," he added, looking to his daughter, "I definitely need time to get to know you – and to spend time with Mummy. I'll be here as long as I can."

"Will that be a long time?" Steffi asked hopefully.

"I don't know," the Doctor told her honestly, "We'll have wait and see, okay?"

Then Adelaide got up and took her daughter by the hand.

"You need to go back to bed, it's late," she said to her daughter, "You and Daddy can talk in the morning."

The little girl let go of her hand and turned back to the Doctor and gave him a hug and he really didn't mind the pain as she gave him a squeeze, because he had no idea how long he would be able to last out, and every moment was precious.

The Doctor watched as Adelaide led the child out of the room and back upstairs to bed, and while he waited for her to return, he ran his fingers through sweat dampened hair as he fought off another wave of pain as he wondered:

 _How long would he last like this?_

She wanted answers, but now he couldn't bring himself to tell her everything, not yet – he wanted to have at least one night reunited with Adelaide, one night of near normality before the truth made everything come crashing down. It seemed only right that he had that time with her. But how she would feel when he told her the truth was something he could only guess at :

 _Would she forgive him for coming back now, when she found out that for him, it was already too late?_


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

By the time Adelaide returned to the front room, the Doctor had taken off his tie and partly unbuttoned his shirt. He looked like he was breaking out in a heavy sweat, and on seeing the look of concern in her eyes, he felt a sting of guilt as he tried to play it down.

"You look terrible!" Adelaide said as she sat down beside him, "I think it's time you told me what's going on, Doctor!"

He tried to ignore the pains that flickered through his body as he forced a smile as pain reflected in his eyes.

"It's been too long. I've never stopped missing you, I've just met our daughter for the first time...everything else can wait."

"No, it can't! Why did you turn up here burning up like it's the middle of summer when the snow is falling outside?" she demanded, "I'm not stupid, Doctor -"

"Oh, I'd _never_ call you stupid! You're nothing less than brilliant," the Doctor assured her, then he shifted in his seat as he focussed on her gaze and tried to block out thoughts of how the burning pain that was creeping into his bones was slowly sinking deeper. The pain was something like heat that threatened to crack his bones wide open, and he knew when it got to that point, the fire would be real – because he would have no choice but to regenerate...

Adelaide frowned.

"You turned up here looking like death. Why?"

"I don't know...flu. I wish it was flu..."

He stopped talking, falling silent as he caught the look in her eyes.

 _This was it, no more hiding._

 _She had him on that line, she has seen it in his eyes..._

"What happened to you, Doctor?"

The look in his eyes darkened, and with it the shadows beneath his eyes seemed darker still as he looked to the firelight and wished he could feel its warmth, then he shivered and looked back at the mother of his child.

"There was an incident with an old enemy of mine. It led to circumstances... you know me, I never could walk away from something when lives were at stake... I'm capable of absorbing radiation safely...part of a quirk of my species. But not as much as I absorbed _that_ day. _I took more than my body could withstand, and I'm dying because of it._ "

As she saw fear reflect in his eyes her own gaze misted with tears, but then she drew in a deep breath, determined to hold back on her own emotion because clearly, the Doctor hadn't come here to weep with her. He was looking to her for strength, and that was what she was going to give him in his time of need.

"Radiation?" she said, and silently recalled what the mysterious man who claimed to be from Unit had told her months before.

He nodded.

"And there's nothing I can do but wait. It could be today, tomorrow – maybe I have a few days left to be with you and Steffi – if I'm lucky. I was told I had to wait – because of the timeline. I had to be where I was to stop the Master from destroying the human race. I don't regret that, but I _do_ regret the years I spent travelling alone when I could have been with you."

She stared at him.

"You were told about your own death?"

The Doctor nodded.

"Yes I was, by a future version of me, a Doctor I one day become. He said I had to be there, to save the timeline – and he was right about that. He also told me to come back to you before it was too late."

Adelaide thought for a moment, and as she realised something, she felt a chill as it suddenly struck her why that man had seemed so familiar...

"This future you, was he tall and thin, an older man with grey hair?"

The Doctor was still in pain. He leant back against the softness of the sofa as he replied.

"Black suit with red lining?"

"He told me he was from Unit!" Adelaide said in surprise, "Said his name was Basil!"

" _Basil?"_ for a moment the Doctor forgot his pain and managed a weak laugh.

"Basil? Really? He said that was his name?"

"He said he wanted me to know he would never stop looking for you."

Now the Doctor had stopped smiling.

"He didn't have to do that. I guess he wanted to because he is still me, there are many versions of me but we are all the same man with the same memories. Perhaps he remembered he loved you and had regrets. He wouldn't have done this for any other reason..." he paused, thinking back to his future self who had walked through the snow not caring about the cold, "I think...I can't be sure, but I think he's in trouble. There's this look in is eyes like he's losing the will to carry on."

"And that's not our concern," Adelaide replied, suddenly feeling very protective towards the man who had saved her life on Mars, the same man who now looked very weak and vulnerable as he sat there perspiring and shivering, "You need to think of yourself," she added, "This radiation -"

 _"Is fatal."_

He sounded resigned to that fact, but as she ran through all the other Doctor had told her, she decided that perhaps this was best approached carefully:

 _She had once been resigned to her fate, too – and back then, it had been the Doctor who had intervened to rewrite her future._

 _Maybe now was time to repay the favour..._

"What if there was a way to treat the damage?"

Pain briefly registered on his face as the Doctor leant forward, reaching for her hands and grasping them as he looked into her eyes.

"Adelaide, you're not listening to me...this is the end. There's no other choice."

"But what if there was another choice?"

The depth of desperation she saw in his eyes made her want to weep.

"There isn't," he replied, "My body is wrecked. I'm dying. And when I regenerate I don't know who I will be or if he will remember you – regeneration can be traumatic. And there's a timeline to consider. I met _a_ future self. There _will_ be others. I have other lifetimes ahead of me to consider. _My death is a fixed point in time_."

His hands trembled slightly in her grip as he let go again, but although he was resigned to his fate, he could tell at a glance that Adelaide wasn't convinced.

"You once told me the same thing about my own death," she replied, "And here I am, five years later, still alive, bringing up our child! You could be wrong about that fixed point!"

"I'm not," he told her, "I know I'm dying...and I just want to spend some time with you while I still can," pain reflected in his eyes, "I am so sorry it has to be this way...leaving it too late..."

He paused, clutching at the arm of the chair as pain shot through him violently, making him catch his breath and grip at the fabric of the arm rest as his nails dug in and his knuckles turned while.

" _I can't do this...I can't take this..."_

He drew in another sharp breath, gave a low moan of pain and then let go of the sofa and briefly doubled up as the pain reached new heights and his vision was punctured by sparks of light as he fought against the urge to either throw up or pass out.

Adelaide was up from the sofa, in front of him and with a hand on his shoulder as she leant over him, asking him softly if he wanted to lie down.

"No," he said, "If I do that I won't get up again...I'm not even sure I _can_ get up..."

His eyes had filled with tears now.

" _I don't want to die!"_ he said tearfully, and she wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly.

"It's okay," she said softly as she stroked his damp hair, "You don't have to be afraid – I won't leave you. And I still think there could be a way out of this for you."

As she let go of him he looked up at her.

"I shouldn't have come here, not now, not like this... I should leave."

He leant heavily on the chair and staggered to his feet. His face was pale and he was sweating and unsteady as he reached for his coat.

"I'm so sorry about this," he said again, "bad timing..."

Adelaide stepped in front of him, unsure if she was planning to stop him leaving or simply standing there to catch him, because he looked as if he were about to collapse.

"Doctor, you can't leave. You're too weak!"

"I have to go back to the Tardis, I don't want to go, but I have to go. There's no other way."

He looked into her eyes and so much regret reflected there.

"I do love you," he whispered, then he looked downwards, focusing on the rug he stood on as he tried to fight off a wave of dizziness, "I would have stayed longer if I could..I just can't -"

"But maybe there is a way to save you!" Adelaide said, "If you just listen -"

" _No. I can't...too late.."_

The Doctor slumped to the floor, finally giving up the fight against the pain and weakness that smothered him. He landed hard on his side and Adelaide dropped to her knees, swept his damp hair away from his eyes and spoke to him firmly.

"Doctor, can you hear me?"

He gave no response as he breathed slowly, and that slow breathing alarmed her because he seemed a little _too_ peaceful for a man who had simply passed out...

" _Doctor!"_ she said again, and this time his eyes flickered open and he struggled to focus on her.

"Leave me..." he murmured.

But Adelaide was reaching for her phone and making a call.

"What are you doing?" he asked, trying to focus as she knelt beside him waiting for the call to be answered.

"The other Doctor told me something when he came here – he said an alien ship crash landed a while back, and Unit have some of the parts, including a chamber capable of reversing radioactive contamination. He's trying to give you a chance – and so am I!"

The Doctor wanted to get up but could only roll on to his back as his aching body felt like lead.

"Don't do this," he whispered, "No one can help me.. _.Don't_ put me through this, the chamber...it won't be compatible..."

"I have every faith in Unit and in you – the _other_ you who wanted to help," she replied, and then the call was answered.

"This is Adelaide Brooke," she said urgently, "The Doctor is with me and he's very sick – taken a large dose of radiation. I have it on the Doctor's authority that you have a chamber in your possession that will effectively treat him. Send help, do it _now_ \- I don't think he can last much longer!"

And as he lay there, the Doctor heard all that she said, but her voice was fading out like he was sinking underwater. His last thought was that he hoped he wasn't going to regenerate yet, because even though the pain was terrible, after seeing his family, after meeting Steffi for the first time, he really didn't want to go...

That was his last thought as the room faded out and Adelaide's voice, as she said his name again, grew dim and distant, and then the Doctor lost consciousness.

* * *

Far off in the soft darkness of space the Twelfth Doctor's Tardis was drifting peacefully, even though the man within it was troubled by thoughts of the story of Clara and what may or may not have been so much more than a story.

As he ran a hand over the controls, he paused, toying with the idea of going back to visit Susie Fontana Brooke once more – just to see if he got a welcome that would confirm positive changes had been made to the timeline. Then he cancelled that idea, because it was too soon. He hadn't yet sensed a change in his own past, and he knew when he did, he would have to return to the middle of the twenty first century and spell out _exactly_ when his Tenth self would have to leave to ensure that when he did regenerate, his Eleventh self would crash land in the garden of Amelia Pond...

It wouldn't be easy for the Doctor to agree to leave his family, not if he succeeded with the alien chamber and managed to live for a while longer. But there could be no other way. He didn't want the past to change, not for the others. Even though there was nothing that could put right his own past, the root of his sorrow...

"Clara," he said aloud, and saying that name seemed so natural, like a habit he could never break. As if there really had been a Clara Oswald in his life...

"I don't know if you ever really existed," he said aloud as he stood in the console room looking down at the Tardis controls, "But maybe you did, and _if_ you did, _maybe_ I loved you."

And as he stood there, he got that feeling again – creeping up on him like eyes on his back, like she was standing a short distance away, just looking at him with a smile on her face. He slowly glanced over his shoulder, but no one was behind him.

"I wish you'd haunt me again," he said, "I need you to haunt me."

And the only reply that came back was the soft hum of the Tardis, reminding him starkly that he was alone. That sound used to be such a source of comfort, gave him such a sense of home – but not now. These days, it reminded him of his loneliness, and the pain of it went deep, cutting to the bone.

The Doctor gave a sigh and placed his hands on the console, looking down at the controls as his mind still settled on the mystery of the woman he could not quite recall. His memory had her shrouded in mist, so much mist that he couldn't tell if she was real or imagined – yet his hearts told a different story - with every beat, they spoke of pain and heartbreak and a love realised too late...

 _And then it hit him._

It came over him violently, a flashback to the past, in his Tenth life:

 _Everything was dark and blurred and pain filled his body so sharply it was taking over his mind, too. He struggled to focus as Adelaide leant over him._

" _Unit are here...they're going to take you to the facility. I'll be along shortly – I have to wait for my daughter to pick Steffi up, she's agreed to look after her for the next few days. After that I won't leave your side again, Doctor."_

 _He drew in a weak breath. Light was glowing from out by the front of the house and he could hear the sound of a helicopter landing._

" _Is this revenge for me rewriting your fate?" he whispered as he looked up at her._

 _Genuine shock registered in her eyes._

" _Revenge? I'm trying to save your life! How you could you say that to me -"_

" _I'm sorry," he whispered, then he realised he had only said it in his mind as he lost consciousness again._

 _The scene moved on to a brightly lit chamber, and as the power ran through it, the Doctor was screaming. It wasn't a few seconds of pain, it went on and on until he was too weak to cry out._

 _Then he was in a quiet room, resting as the pain that had shaken his melting bones began to settle and he felt solid once more. Solid but sore in a way that make movement impossible. Adelaide ran her hand over his hair and then leant over him as she spoke quietly._

" _It's okay, Doctor, the worst is over now...you're going to feel much better soon, you just need to rest..."_

Adelaide's words briefly echoed inside the Twelfth Doctor's head as he blinked and the flow of visions ended, and he leant against the console for a movement, needing to catch his breath. Those memories of his Tenth life had hit him so sharply he felt as if he had just lived them, seconds before. In a way he supposed he had – and now time was catching up with him...

He breathed a sigh and straightened up, paused for thought and then set a course for a return to the light speed ship captained by Suzie Fontana Brooke. After making such a change to his own past, he was sure he would get a warm welcome this time...

The Tardis landed and he stepped outside, ready for a much warmer welcome. Instead, as the Tardis door closed behind him, the Doctor looked about the narrow corridor in confusion:

 _He had returned to the right flight path and the right date and time._

 _But this was not the vessel captained by Suzie Fontana Brooke._

He looked about him again, but no matter how many times he looked, he couldn't change it:

 _This was a different ship..._


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

As the Doctor glanced over his shoulder, saw no one about and then began to make his way up the corridor, more memories were hitting him - memories of an altered past :

In his Tenth life he had lived a long time considering the damage the radiation had caused – at least, much longer than the expected hours or days he had first imagined when he had turned up at Adelaide's door... He couldn't see all of it yet, but time was still reshaping. Somewhere back there his other self was on a different path, and in another time, it had already happened but the memory was yet to hit.

 _Things were still being decided. A grey area._

 _Of course it was – he still had to go back and remind his other self that one day, he would have to leave._

"And in another time and place its already happened," he murmured as he walked alone down the corridor.

As the Doctor reached the end and a silver door slid back to reveal a lift, he glanced back and realised this had to be some kind of storage area, because there were other doors nearby and through small windows set into those doors he could see sealed crates.

He stepped into the lift and the doors closed.

"What now?" he said aloud, seeing no control button to choose a floor.

But the lift was already making a gentle climb.

" _Be warned - we shoot intruders,"_ said a familiar voice.

The Doctor detected humour in her voice and he started to smile. Then he blinked away tears, cursing time for making memories of another life so bright and sharp all of a sudden:

 _The person who had just spoken through the comm system was Adelaide. And he had just had a flashback to two lifetimes ago when he had returned home after two months recovering from the treatment for the radiation poisoning. Adelaide had helped him to recover, she had told him how much she loved him and he had asked her to marry him. When she had said she was sure he could do better than such an old woman, he had reminded her that he was was well over nine hundred years old..._

The Doctor blinked again to clear his vision, then he looked up to see a camera in the corner of the lift, looking down at him like a big black glass eye.

"Thank goodness we're on good terms," he said to her, "I almost believed you for a moment..."

"It's good to see you again, Doctor," she said, and the warmth in her voice surprised him.

Then the lift stopped and as it halted, the Doctor's pale blue eyes widened as he realised something:

There had _definitely_ been changes to the timeline, and not just for his own past...In the other version of events, Adelaide had died when her daughter was a young woman, which would have put her around eighty-five years old. So how come she was still alive around the time Susie's vessel was no longer the first light speed ship, and how was she still able to make another space mission at her age? _Adelaide had to be over ninety years old by now..._

* * *

The Doctor was still turning that thought over in his mind as the lift door opened and as he stared at the woman who had turned up to greet him, she laughed on seeing his expression, and he was still staring at her:  
 _It was Adelaide._

She had to be at the very least ninety years old - but she didn't look a day older than she had when he had first met her in his Tenth life back on Bowie Base One. Her uniform was tight and complimented her athletic body, there wasn't a single grey strand in her tied back fair hair, and he struggled to spot even the smallest line on her face...

 _How was this possible?_

"Are you going to stand there all day?" Adelaide said in surprise.

"No, that would be silly," he said quickly, and he stepped out of the lift and braced himself for the inevitable hug, which wasn't too bad because she kept it brief, and then she stepped back and he smoothed down his crimson lined jacket and smiled.

"I'm surprised you're overjoyed to see me, after the way I first introduced myself all those years ago!"

"You're not my husband," she reminded him, "Only your Tenth self had that privilege. But how could I not at least _like_ you? I've told you before, you're a part of him – my last link, if you see what I mean."

The Doctor just nodded in agreement, noting that conversation was not yet registering as a memory, which was odd...

"Come with me," Adelaide said, "I'll give Steffi a shout in a minute."

"Steffi's on board?"

As she led him down another corridor, she glanced back at him and smiled.

"Well I wasn't going to become the Captain of the first Earth built ship capable of jumping time without the Doctor on board!"

He looked surprised and she laughed softly.

"Steffi. Doctor Steffi Brooke -Smith, your other self's daughter."

"And mine too," he said warmly, but she shot him a look and his smile faded.

"Okay, _his_ daughter,"he said, hiding his annoyance at her insistence that Steffi was _entirely_ the daughter of his Tenth self only.

As they turned a corner and a device on her wrist bleeped, she raised it and spoke up.

"Captain Brooke here."

"Captain – it's Deborah from Research, just letting you know me and Maxwell have just finished with the first samples – all clear so far and as pure as a natural spring."

"That's great," she said, "Looks like we'll have some good news to send back to Earth soon."

Then she ended the call and they reached another corridor, and she led him across it and opened up a door that led to a wide room that was carpeted and furnished with tables and soft seating. She led him over to a spot by a wide viewing window that looked out to a view of space peppered with starlight and sat down and gestured to the seat beside her.

The Doctor sat down too, resisting the urge to shift closer because the sight of the wedding ring on her left hand brought back the memory of the day back in his Tenth life when he had placed that on her hand and vowed to love her forever.

 _She just didn't see him._

 _He was still here, in another body with another face – but he was still the Doctor._

 _Just not hers..._

Adelaide had started speaking, but for a moment he didn't hear her.

A thought had just hit him:

Hadn't he said that to somebody once, that she couldn't see him?

" _You're not seeing me..."_

The words echoed in his mind as his twin hearts ached and he thought of the story of a woman called Clara.

 _Was she just a story, or had she been real?_

That question was tormenting him again.

"Doctor? Did you hear me, you seem light years away!"

He looked at Adelaide and blinked, smiling as he focused on her and another memory hit him, a memory of two lifetimes before, of her laughing as he celebrated his recovery as he held her down playfully and kissed her on the bed - the same bed they had shared throughout their marriage. The memory had come back so sharply he missed that bed as he looked at her...

"I'm sorry," he replied, "I was caught up in thoughts of the past. You probably still think of me – I mean _him_ , of my Tenth self?"

"Of course I do," she replied, and as she smiled as her eyes shone with love and strength, the kind that refused to be destroyed by grief, "How could I ever forget him or stop loving him?"

"Don't you get lonely?" he asked.

"Think back, Doctor,"she said fondly, "Think of all I shared with him. Think of what he left me with. How could I ever feel alone or without his love?"

He thought of Steffi, now another Brooke to be a space pioneer, and pride shone in his eyes.

"Well of course you have his daughter -"

" _And his parting gift."_

Her words moved him more than he cared to show.

"Adelaide," he said kindly, "Please don't talk about me in that life as if I was like some kind of miracle worker. We both know the pregnancy was an accident."

She looked at him in surprise.

"No...not Steffi... the other gift. His farewell gift."

And then she turned over her left hand.

The Doctor had glanced down again, purely to see how the light caught on the ring he remembered putting on her finger, but as he saw the scar on the back of her hand, he met her gaze again, and this time looked as startled as he felt...

She laughed softly.

"Don't pretend you can't remember! You saw it when you got out of the lift, you noticed how young I look. I'm ninety five years old and don't look or feel a day over fifty!"

Her smile faded. The Doctor was still staring at her.

"That burn on the back of your hand...am I right in thinking you could have erased it if you chose to do so?"

"Yes, but why would I want to to erase a reminder of his parting gift?"

The Doctor had just worked it out.

He looked to the burn and then met her gaze once more, and realised _exactly_ what it was that had kept her so strong and saved her from heartbreak and grief at the loss of his other self:

 _That scar on the back of her hand was a burn, and not just any burn. It had come from being too close when a Time Lord regenerated... She had been caught in his fire, breathed it in...And she thought it was his gift, never ageing, staying young... Maybe it would last out for two, maybe three more lifetimes... She had got too close, and now had the power to not only stop ageing, but also had the power to regenerate..._

"I know he gave me this because he loved me," she added, "He couldn't stay any longer...he tried, he held on for so long...and then he had to go, so he gave me a part of his gift so that I could keep a part him with me forever."

... _By accident_ , thought the Doctor as he forced a smile and felt thankful Adelaide didn't know him well enough to see he was about to tell an enormous lie.

" _Of course he did,"_ he told her, _"I remember it well."_

Then he fell silent, deciding it was best to say no more, because clearly he recalled nothing as yet because it was still a grey area, the timeline was still falling into place.

Then Adelaide thought back to their previous topic of conversation.

"So, what do you think of my new job? I'm Captain of the first ship capable of jumping time _and_ I'm running the mission to find a suitable Earth colony planet – I've visited Celestra Terra One six times jumping a total of forty thousand years to check for quality levels of air and soil and oxygen... the last thing to test was the water. And that's just come back as pure. So it looks like Susie might well be looking at an upgrade when her ship returns to Earth and the next mission will be to start up the beginnings of a new colony."

The Doctor felt a creeping sense of unease.

"Water?"

She laughed and shook her head.

"Mars was a long time ago, Doctor. Our equipment is highly advanced and I can assure you, the water is safe. We have samples of it on board and it's safe enough to drink."

"Have you tried it yet?"

"No one has."

"Maybe you should keep it that way," he replied, "Just to be safe. And run more tests before you think about taking it back to Earth. Sorry if I sound over cautious, but after what happened on Mars -"

"That was Mars, this is another planet," she reminded him, "I can't let the past run my life – I never look back unless I think of my husband, and then I only remember the good times. He would have wanted that. He told me. You remember what he said, don't you?"

Now the Doctor was struggling.

"I'm sure you do too," he replied.

Adelaide frowned.

"You do remember? I mean, you have to – the Doctor wouldn't forget something like that! You couldn't forget what you said before you died."

He made a wild guess.

"I know I said I didn't want to go."

She stared at him as she realised something she ought to have worked out before – _now_ she understood why he had looked at her like he did when he had stepped out of the lift and been so surprised that she hadn't aged...

"Oh no... you really don't recall it, do you?"

"What should I recall?"he asked.

"Tell me what you said before you died."

He guessed again.

"That I... _loved_ you?"

Adelaide drew in a shocked breath.

"You told me to be happy," she said in a hushed voice, "Doctor, just tell me one thing, you _must_ recall where you died?"

He didn't, because when he tried to hurry time up to hit him with the recollection, all he saw was a grey hazy area where the timeline was still falling into place, and he was suddenly _very_ nervous of saying the wrong thing and splitting Adelaide's new future into scattered pieces...

"In the Tardis. I believe I would have died in the Tardis."

"Alone?" she asked him, and he knew that was a challenge.

"Probably," he replied.

Her face paled.

"You died in my arms!"

"That explains a lot," he told her, "Don't worry, I won't say a word. I can't let this change. I think it's wonderful that you get to live on thanks to his... _gift_."

Adelaide looked at him for a moment.

"Do you remember visiting us a year after he came back to me, and you said next time we met the _four_ of us would have a reunion to remember?"

 _"Not yet,"_ he replied quietly.

Her face was still pale as she rose from her seat.

"And you travelled here alone?"

He got up too and glared at her has he wondered why that question made his twin hearts ache so desperately.

"Of course I did, who _else_ would be here?"

She just looked at him, still shocked, as she spoke into the device on her wrist.

"Steffi...change of plan...I need you to keep working..The Doctor has to leave..."

"Can't he stay a while longer?" she asked.

As he heard his daughter's voice, he recalled the first time he had met Steffi when she was five years old and he had been in agony from the radiation, and he felt as if his hearts were breaking all over again.

Adelaide's gaze had not broken with his as she spoke into the device and gave her reply:

"He can't stay, not right now Steffi – _he's too early_."

As she ended the conversation, the Doctor understood.

"Sorry," he said quickly, "I'm really going to try and forget everything you've said to me because I _am_ too early. I've only just recalled you married the other me. Time is still falling into place. I have to go back and visit you and him. To you its already happened but for me, it's not done yet. I have to put that right."

She nodded.

"Just go," she replied.

"It's for the best," he added, feeling torn between wanting to say more or simply turning away and running out the door as fast as he could.

"I shouldn't be here yet, sorry!" he said to her, and then he left the room and hurried back through the corridors, thinking only of returning to the Tardis and getting away from this point in time - because he did not yet belong here...

* * *

It was an immense sense of relief for the Doctor to be back in the Tardis and far from the ship captained by Adelaide Brooke. As he Tardis travelled on, he breathed a relieved sigh, feeling thankful his mistake of an early appearance had not endangered her future. Despite his pain at the loss of someone he couldn't recall whose name might be Clara, he was glad to know Adelaide had taken in some of his regenerative power. She was someone he would never forget and always think of with love, and it was a comforting thought to know she would live on for a few more life times -not quite a Time Lord, but she was certainly a woman who would see many centuries to come...

Then he thought about a journey that he had to make, back to his Tenth lifetime, a year after his former self had returned to Adelaide.

That journey had to be made, or the whole time line would be put at risk...

He set the coordinates and then stood at the console, waiting for the Tardis to land, thinking on all she had said. It was then he wondered what he had meant when he had told her the next time they met, all _four_ of them would have a reunion to remember.

" _All four?"_ he said aloud, and wondered exactly what he had meant by his own words that he was yet to utter.

Then the Tardis landed, and the Doctor had no more time to think on it – because this time he was in the right time and place - and had to keep a meeting, or the future would fall apart for all concerned...


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

In the time that had passed since the Tenth Doctor had recovered from the treatment to partially lift out the radiation, after the pain had faded away and the bruises had healed and his fluctuating and wavering strength had started to return in an ebb and flow, he had wasted no time and asked Adelaide to marry him. When she had said that perhaps she was too old for him, he had laughed and reminded her that he was well over nine hundred year old.

She had agreed to his proposal, and now they had been married for six months, it was 2065 and autumn was turning colder as the bleak chill of winter started to slip through the trees and shake their boughs as dying leaves twisted to the damp ground.

On days like this, the Doctor didn't like to think about the dying part of the year, because _dying_ was a subject he was keen to avoid. The anti radiation device that had almost killed him on first use because the power needed to be adjusted, had turned out to be Dalek in origin. After explaining this and reminding the staff at the medical base that he was humanoid and not encased in a metal shell, he had been assured the lower level of power used on his next dose would be much kinder on him.

The first, on the day Adelaide had called Unit for help, had seen him screaming in agony for over four hours before losing consciousness, partly because of the pain and partly due to his weakness at the time. He had spent the next few days knowing nothing at all, and that had been ignorant bliss compared to the ordeal Adelaide had suffered as she worried for him as he was kept sedated, and on life support for over a week.

But he had soon recovered, at least enough to go home with her. His recovery had been rapid at first, then the pain had kicked back in and he had been able to fight it off using drugs manufactured by the Tardis – medication that thankfully had no side effects. But within twelve weeks the radiation effects returned, unpredictably, causing random pain in any part of his body that it chose to attack, and it was soon worked out that he would need an hour in the alien chamber once every twelve weeks. This was something he came to fear even though the power had been adjusted and he was now allowed heavy sedation to get him through the procedure. Each session left him with deep bruising where the radiation had risen up and attacked him, and he was used to feeling weak and needing rest, but on the good days, he made the most of it, knowing these good days were rare and impossible to predict.

No one could tell him how long he would last before regeneration would be his only option. So far he was coping, and he wanted to hold on as long as he could because he had grown closer to Steffi, who was seven years old now, and after marrying Adelaide, he had made himself a promise that he would stay as long as he was able – now he _really_ didn't want to go, because he had his family, and they were enough to remind him of all the reasons he needed to stay...

As the wind blew a gust across the garden and the last of the dead leaves tugged from naked trees scattered about as they dashed against the side of the house like a rolling tide of debris carried on wind, the Doctor heard the bedroom door open and he turned over, away from the window, where beyond it stormy grey clouds were hurried along by the autumn gusts, and turned to see Adelaide enter the room.

She had taken off her heavy coat and scarf and her hair was tied back without a strand out of place as if this woman could even defy the weather. He thought how Adelaide Brooke could stand up to anything, and maybe the wind wouldn't _dare_ to mess with that - and as she smiled so did he, and his dark eyes lit up with warmth as he sat up in bed and ran his fingers through his hair.

"You shouldn't have let me sleep in so late, you're always doing that to me!"

"I told you I was taking Steffi to school. She kissed your cheek and said goodbye – and you said _Bye_ , and then went back to sleep."

"I wish I didn't need so much rest," he said to her, "I hate it when I have days like this – no energy, feeling like my head is full of fog. I'm missing out."

She sat on the edge of the bed and looked into his eyes.

"You need to rest," she reminded him, "You always will. We both know that. Maybe you're having one of those days again."

"No I'm not," he said as his mood brightened, "I feel much better today!"

Then he took hold of her hands as he started to smile.

"Do you realise, in the whole year I've been back here with you, I've been sleeping and resting so much I can count on both hands the number of times we've made love? That's terrible – well, it is for me! I should have lost count months ago!"

She laughed and drew one hand away from his grip and ran it over his hair as she looked at him fondly.

"But its different now. You know the radiation will have an impact on your life – it always will. And it really doesn't matter, as long as we cope with it, right?"

"I suppose so," he replied, and then a playful sparkle lit up his eyes.

"But today is a good day – I do feel a bit better for sleeping in late - and its been _far_ too long. Come here!"

And he slid his arms around her and pulled her on to the bed and then playfully held her down as he looked into her eyes.

"I love you Adelaide," he said softly, and as his grip on her hands loosened she broke free from it and wrapped her arms around him, welcoming his deep and passionate kiss.

* * *

The storm clouds were heavy and dark and the wind was icy as it blew about the lonely house set far out in the countryside, and as the rain began to fall, it hit the windows and ran down the pane in heavy streaks, but the Doctor and Adelaide were warm together in bed, beneath a soft quilt as they embraced, their skin warm and damp from lovemaking. It took the Doctor a while to get his breath back, and as he turned over and took a few minutes to recover, he put his arm around his wife and held her closer as she lay beside him.

"That was good," he said to her, "I needed that, Adelaide. Now I really feel alive!"

"Are we spending all day in bed, then?" she asked him doubtfully.

As he looked at her, he took in the sight of how her fair hair tumbled to her shoulders, and again he thought how beautiful she was. But he didn't want to linger on that thought, or on how much he loved her, because as she had said, things were different now – he was too weak and tired to make love as often as he wanted, and right now the thought was at the back of his mind that he wanted to take her in his arms all over again. But that would have to wait, because he was aware of the aches and pains that flickered through his body, they had been present since waking and perhaps would get worse as the day went on, because sometimes it was like that...

"No, I want to get up and get dressed," he told her, "I can't stay in bed all day – and one of us has to pick Steffi up from school later."

"That will be me," she reminded him, and she had spoken in the tone of voice he had come to recognise as her authoritative tone – the one she gently used when she reminded him that he wasn't going anywhere, because today he looked too tired to be doing much at all.

"I'm still going to get up," he told her, "I don't want Steffi to see me stuck in bed al the time."

Adelaide pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes with a brush of her fingertip.

" _She does know."_

"Yes, she knows I'm ill."

"She knows you're dying. I have explained everything to her – not in a way that would frighten her, I said you could live for a very long time, but you have to have a lot of rest. That's all she needs to know at her age."

The Doctor looked at her in surprise.

"When did you tell her that?"

"After you recovered from the first treatment. It's only fair to be honest, Doctor. She's a child, I'd never lie to her."

There was a flicker of concern in his eyes now.

"Does she have any questions, is there anything she needs to ask me?"

"No," she replied, "I've covered everything. But she knows she can talk to you about it if she feels the need. She's young – the fact that you could live for years to come makes any kind of fear of losing you seem a very long way off. She thinks if you sleep and rest you'll last forever."

"But I won't," he said sadly.

She was giving him that look again,the one that told him Adelaide was far too strong to listen to his doubts.

"Stop it," she replied firmly, "You're doing well and there's no reason to think the worst. You could last for years, and you will, because _I'm_ going to make sure of it."

"I love it when you give me orders," he said playfully.

Adelaide replied with a kiss and got out of bed.

"I'm going back downstairs," she said as picked up her clothing from the floor and started to get dressed, "Get up, Doctor. I'll run you a bath, that should make you feel more comfortable."

And as she fastened the back of her bra she turned her head and looked at him, and he smiled as she caught him out.

"Sitting there watching me get dressed won't help you get going," she told him.

He was still smiling.

"Oh believe me, it already has!" he exclaimed, and then he got out of bed, finally ready to pull together his low level of energy to face another day.

* * *

It was just gone mid day when the sound of the gusting wind outside mixed with another sound – a wheeze and a groan on the air that lasted for a brief time, and then it faded out. Adelaide was in the kitchen making tea, the Doctor was in the front room on the sofa, and as she paused to listen to the wind that now carried no other sound with it, her mind was instantly taken back to the blue box that her husband had led her into, the ship that travelled through space and time – the ship that had saved her from death on Mars when Bowie Base One exploded.

That ship – his Tardis – was now at the side of the house, beneath the shade of an evergreen tree, hidden from sight. She was very familiar with the Tardis now – on his better days he had taken her inside it and showed her the controls, even taken her for a spin around the galaxy a few times. And after all her years of training that had ultimately led to the Mars mission, it was not so difficult for the Doctor to teach her how to _fly_ his Tardis, either...

She was sure, after how familiar she was with the sound of her husband's ship, that she had just heard a Tardis landing somewhere outside. Not his Tardis, because he was tired and resting in the front room, but _another_ Tardis.

 _She was certain she had heard it..._

Adelaide pulled back the curtain and looked out the window down the long garden, towards the back – and there it was - another Tardis, just as she had suspected.

 _"Did you hear that?"_

She turned and glanced at her husband, who looked well for his rest, and as he stood there in his brown suit, with his hair combed and not a trace of sweat on his face, she knew he was definitely going to have a good day – his energy was back at last, and it had happened at the right time, too.

"Look," she said, indicating to the other Tardis.

Then as the door opened she let go of the net and the Doctor joined her at the window, watching as the other Doctor stepped out, the wind ruffled his grey hair and blew back his open jacket showing the crimson lining as he walked down the path towards the house.

"I was expecting him to return," the Doctor said to her, "And I'm glad he's here, because he needs my help."

Adelaide looked at him in surprise.

"Doctor, you are chronically ill! Every single day of your life is an uphill struggle - and you want to waste time and energy on helping _another_ version of you, a man who can clearly fight his personal battles well enough alone?"

The Doctor's dark brown eyes clouded with sorrow as he recalled the day they had met on the Ood planet, and his future self had walked back to his Tardis through the snow and biting wind, not caring about the cold, not caring about anything at all, going by the look in his eyes...

"Yes," he said, "Because he does need my help. _He's lost_. It's like he's losing the will to carry on. _And I think I know why._ I might need your help with this."

Adelaide looked at him in confusion and was about to ask him what kind of help he needed, but then it was to late, because his future self was at the back door, and he tapped on the glass and waited to be let in.

* * *

When Adelaide opened the door, the Twelfth Doctor thanked her and stepped inside. He glanced at his Tenth self and briefly smiled.

"You're looking well," he remarked. "And I can tell you that you will last for a number of years yet – so please, _stop_ thinking about dying. It's depressing for you, _and_ for me to look back on. You'll have a few more years. That's all I can say."

His younger self breathed a relieved sigh, and as he exchanged a glance with Adelaide the Twelfth Doctor guessed had he not been there in the room now, the two of them would have hugged and wept out of relief - and they probably would after he had left...In fact, he had the feeling that was what _would_ happen, but he put the incoming memories to the back of his mind as he focussed on the task at hand.

"I came here to deliver a message," he said, looking intently to Adelaide and then to his younger self, "Doctor, you will have plenty of time here with your family. But when time time comes and you know you can't hold back from regeneration, you must leave in the Tardis to preserve the time line and you must do this alone."

On hearing a mention of the time line, his younger self said nothing and simply nodded.

"I'm sorry," he added, remembering his Tenth self's sadness on hearing that news like a memory that had shot instantly from his former self and into his own mind, he felt his pain on taking in that news, and it was deeper than he cared to show.

"This has to be done," he added, "But you will have many years with Adelaide and Steffi. Please let that be a comfort, to know you _do_ get to spend time with your family. I wish there was more I could do, but the timeline -"

" _What about you?"_

The question his former self had asked had taken him by surprise.

" _Me?_ What about me?"

The younger Doctor looked at him knowingly.

"I hope you've got time to stay around for at least a day," he told him, "Because I'd like you to tell me the story of Clara. Tell me everything, every last detail."

The Doctor's blue eyes widened in surprise.

" _Why_ would you want to hear about a story that lives inside my head?"

His younger self stepped closer, pausing for a moment to compose his thoughts. And when he spoke up again, all ideas his Twelfth incarnation had been toying with of making excuses to leave were banished:

" _Because I've met your former self,"_ the Tenth Doctor replied, _"Our Eleventh life, on the day we saved Gallifrey. And he wasn't travelling alone. He had a companion, and that's why I know she's not just a story. His companion was a young woman named Clara Oswald..."_


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

 _The story of Clara was long and by the time the Twelfth Doctor had finished relating his tale to his Tenth self, it was nightfall._

The tale had only been interrupted for a brief time when Steffi had come home from school and then the Doctor had said hello and watched as his Tenth self and Adelaide had spent some family time together. Later they had dinner, and then as the Doctor watched his former self making memories of family evening he felt strangely sad to know that he would be soon recalling more happy times – and sad ones, too, but it was the happy times he envied, because although the story of Clara still felt like a story, he knew that wasn't true. She _had_ been a real person and a part of his life – the memory wipe had taken away the rest, but it hadn't quite reached that ache deep in his twin hearts that reminded him the story was so much more... At least there were no misty, faded stories about his Tenth life. There would only be vivid and wonderful memories instead, and he envied his former self for that...

Much later, after Steffi had gone to bed, as they sat together in the front room and he finished off relating his tale, Adelaide looked to her husband, and he looked back at his future self.

"So you met Clara Oswald in your Eleventh life and she stayed with you all the way until now?"

The Doctor was sitting in an armchair beside the fire, and he looked to the flickering firelight, then as he glanced to his younger self and his wife, as that firelight reflected on his face, he suddenly seemed so much older, as if the billions of years he had spent trapped and punching his way through that solid wall had etched the lines in his face deeper still.

"To me, it's _all_ a story. But my hearts ache in a way that it could only be the truth. And I try and remember her face but it's gone!"

The Tenth Doctor had been resting for several hours against the sofa and as he straightened up he felt stiff and shifted about awkwardly for a moment as he silently cursed the damage caused by the radiation, then he looked intently at his future self.

"But it _isn't_ a story. I can tell you what she looked like, I remember her face. She was beautiful! She had dark hair and big, expressive eyes."

Twelve looked at him blankly and shook his head, then he closed his eyes as he drew in a sharp breath, enduring the ache in his hearts that had settled there for billions of years, and then his gaze reflected hauntings of grief and loss and timeless sorrow.

" _She had no pulse,"_ he said quietly, _"Clara had no pulse and I couldn't make her heart start beating. That's how the story goes. I can see myself holding her wrist, trying to feel that pulse and there was nothing there...I can see it clearer if I play music...but I can't see her face. I can't remember enough. I wouldn't even know her if I saw her again. How can I find someone I can't recognise?"_

"l'm so sorry, but you can't," his younger self said sadly, "You can't mend this."

Then he fell silent as he thought about it, as the firelight glowed and crackled and Adelaide got up and offered to make some tea and he nodded and the Twelfth Doctor asked for coffee instead, and still the Doctor was silent. He was thinking deeply on the matter, and as Adelaide left the room, he looked again to his older self.

"I don't much like the idea of one day becoming _you_ and going though billions of years trapped in a prison of that scale. I'm sorry, but I think you messed up badly, Doctor. _You went too far for her._ Why didn't you just find the courage to tell her you loved her?"

The Twelfth Doctor looked at him regretfully.

"I'm not even a hugger. Love is something I would find _very_ difficult to admit to so openly."

His younger self studied him for a moment, sitting there so lost and with that grief stricken look in his eyes, and he shook his head.

"You could have put a stop to this a long time ago, after you defeated Missy, when Danny Pink was gone forever, you should have _told_ her you loved her! It would have been better to have done that – do you really think she would have rejected you?"

The Twelfth Doctor shrugged, then avoided his gaze.

"Maybe..." he murmured.

His younger self gave a sigh.

"None of this should have happened," he told him firmly, "You should have told her how you felt – or even left her alone for a while, gone to think about it, then told her how you felt! _Anything_ would have been better than for her to die because _you_ let her go too far!"

The Doctor glared at him.

"She's caught in her last moment, she's _not_ dead!"

"Not _quite_!" the Tenth Doctor said angrily, " _Anything_ would have been better than that - it would have been better for her if she'd vanished off the face of the Earth for a while..."

He stopped, his dark eyes widened and he paused for thought, just for a moment and then, ignoring the aches that nagged at his body, he jumped up from his seat.

 _"Wait there. I just need a word with my wife. I'll be back in a minute. I have to do something."_

The Twelfth Doctor was still sitting by the fire, feeling partly confused and partly heartbroken as his emotions seemed to suggest he had lost the love of his life, while his mind kept her face a blank mystery and reminded him she was _just_ a story.

"I won't be a minute!" his younger added quickly and then he hurried from the room, leaving the older Time Lord with the sad eyes alone by the fire.

* * *

As he dashed into the kitchen, Adelaide turned and looked at him in surprise - it wasn't often she saw her husband so fired up with energy and enthusiasm.

"You have an idea?" she asked.

He stepped closer and lowered his voice.

"I'm going back to the Tardis and I'm setting a flight plan. I need to go back to the point in time where he's just stopped Missy and her army of Cybermen. I need to go back and find Clara. I'm going to make some changes to his future."

Adelaide looked at him doubtfully.

"You'd literally mess with your own future to try to make it better for another version of you?"

"But one day I'll be him."

" _With her."_

She hadn't meant to sound so accusing, and the flash of hurt she saw in his dark eyes made her wish she could take back those words.

"Oh god, what have I said...I didn't mean it like that -"

"I know you didn't," he replied, "And I promise you, as I am today, in this life, Clara meant nothing more to me than a passing visitor in my timeline. She was with my next self, and he might have been in love with her but I certainly wasn't." He paused, looked to the doorway and kept his voice low, "Clara's human. He might have her with him for around a hundred and twenty years – she's going to live longer and age slower because of constantly travelling through time time vortex – but she's mortal with one life and he needs to share that life with her."

As she looked to her Time Lord husband, who looked deceptively young and handsome for his nine hundred years, she thought about her own mortality.

"And I'm human too – _and_ getting older all the time. I worry about what might happen to you after I'm gone."

He gave a sigh.

"Adelaide, I have radiation poisoning. I'll die and regenerate _long_ before anything happens to you."

His words pained her, but she wasn't about to weep over a truth she had accepted before she married him, because she had decided long ago to make the most of every day they had left together, and encourage him to do the same.

"Thanks for the reminder," she replied, brushing off the topic of his demise, "Now back to the plan – you're sure you want to do this? I thought messing around with time lines could be dangerous?"

"Well, it could be – but I don't think it will," he replied, "I'm sure Clara wasn't meant to end up caught in the last moment of her life, frozen in time with no heartbeat. No one has a death like that. It's not even death, it's suspension _between_ life and death. I can't allow that to happen!"

The Doctor grabbed his coat from a hook by the back door and put it on, then he went outside and Adelaide followed, he took the Tardis key from his coat pocket and unlocked the door, glanced back at the house to be sure his other self was no where to be seen, and then slipped inside quietly.

* * *

"You're _sure_ about this?"

The Doctor was leaning over the console, checking the flight plan. He was wearing his glasses and studying and double checking everything he had programmed in.

"Yes, and _stop_ asking me, Adelaide – I'm tired, I've got a headache and I just want to go to bed, but I _have_ to get this done."

He paused, stepped back from the console and rubbed his temples, and then he gave a weary sigh.

"You're exhausted," she said to him, "Don't tell me you're okay because I can see you're not. Go back to the house, someone needs to keep an eye on your other self."

He thought about it, and then he smiled as he drew the Tardis key from his pocket.

"Drive carefully!" he said teasingly.

She smiled.

"I'm far more careful than you'll _ever_ be!"

Her hand closed over the key, but he held on to it and pulled her closer and they shared a kiss. As he broke off from that kiss the Doctor let go of the key, and Adelaide put it into her pocket.

"Keep her here in the Tardis until I come back," he told her, "Don't worry about what I'll say to the other Doctor – I need to speak to Clara before she sees him again. See you soon."

He leant in and kissed her again.

"Look after my Tardis!" he said, and winked.

"I think I can manage that," Adelaide replied, and they exchanged a smile that needed no more words, and then the Doctor walked away.

The Tardis door closed, and Adelaide looked down at the controls, remembering all her husband had taught her about flying his ship. Then she activated the flight controls and with a wheeze and a groan, the Tardis set off on its journey.

* * *

The Twelfth Doctor had been sitting alone in silence in the front room, watching the firelight and thinking about Clara, the woman who his hearts missed but his memory denied. He felt caught in a fog with no way out, and the longer he was stuck there, the more he wished he could fade from existence, just so he never felt this depth of pain again, because he had carried it for far too long.

"Sorry about that," said his younger self as he came back into the room, "I had to ask my wife to use the Tardis to go and fetch me some painkillers – I'm running out of a few vital medicines and she needs to make a quick trip to get some more for the replicator."

He took off his coat and tossed it aside and it landed on the back of the sofa, then he sat down and looked to his older self, who was still watching the firelight.

"So... _did you hear a word I just said?_ "

He turned his head and sadness reflected in his eyes.

"Yes I did...she didn't have to do that, my Tardis is _vastly_ improved on yours. I'm sure I could have found you what you needed and replicated it very easily, you could have asked me."

"No," the Tenth Doctor replied, "I'd rather sit here with you and talk about Clara."

"So would I," he agreed, "But I've told you all I know. I can't remember any more. I do know how I feel, though."

"And how do you feel?" Ten asked him.

Every line on the older Doctor's face seemed etched deeper in pain as he gave his reply.

"Like I want to die, because then I can _really_ forget her," he replied, "I can't live with this pain any longer."

"Maybe you won't have to," he replied, "Sometimes pain can stop hurting...if given time. Tell me about her again. Tell me everything you can remember, because I really do want to listen."

* * *

Adelaide walked into Coal Hill School just as the children were coming out. It was the end of the school day and as she walked into the building wearing jeans and a smart black leather jacket, she could have easily passed as a parent or perhaps a grandparent of one of the students.

She recalled all she had read in the Tardis data base on the way there regarding Clara Oswald, and turned a corner and went up a corridor, and found the door to her classroom open.

" _Miss Oswald?"_

Clara was sitting at her desk in the empty classroom, marking work and had a stack of books beside her. She looked up and smiled, putting down her pen and left the class homework aside as she greeted her visitor.

"Yes?" she replied, looking at the smartly dressed woman with tied back fair hair who she was sure she had never seen before, not even once at parent's evening... Who was she?

Her visitor reached her desk and stood there and greeted her with a smile.

"I'm not a parent," she told her, quickly dispelling any confusion, "Well, I _am_ , I will be one day – right now there's a younger version of me out there in this time – _your_ time - and she;s studying to chase a career in space flight. And she'll get there. Along the way she'll also raise a family and one day, when she's much older, she meets a man called the Doctor – not your Doctor, another previous version of him – and they marry and have a child together – actually the daughter comes first then the wedding. It's complicated. Are you following this so far?"

Clara's eyes widened in surprise.

"You're married to a past version of the Doctor? Really?"

"I'm Adelaide Brooke."

Clara looked at at her blankly.

"He's never mentioned you."

Adelaide showed no surprise on hearing that.

"Well he has regenerated twice since he first met me."

Clara got up from her desk and grabbed her bag and looked to Adelaide.

"So why did he send you here? I mean, is he in trouble, does he need _my_ Doctor's help?"

"The Doctor asked me to fetch you," she replied, "Actually my husband isn't in trouble – but the man _you_ call the Doctor is, and he needs _our_ help."

* * *

Clara had needed no more persuading to leave with Adelaide.

As she stood in the Tardis and looked around at a console room she did not recognise, she watched in surprise as Adelaide activated the controls and the Tardis took flight.

"Where is he?"

Adelaide looked up from the controls.

"Who?"

"Your husband."

"I left him at home where he lives with me and our young daughter."

"Home? As in, a house, _not_ the Tardis?"

Adelaide turned a dial on the control panel and leant on the console and looked across it, meeting the gaze of the young woman who stood in the alien glow of the Tardis light, her wide eyes fixed on her as she demanded answers.

"I met my husband on Mars. I was running a mission at the time – and an alien parasite race got into our water supply and killed most of my crew. The Doctor saved me. Much later he came back for me, after he had battled the Master and stopped him from taking over Earth. He came back to me suffering the effects of radiation poisoning - and although we have it under control, understandably he's not up for much travelling any more. But we have our daughter to raise and she needs to go to school so it makes sense to stay on earth anyway. He's not here because he's feeling unwell and he's very tired - and someone had to keep an eye on your Doctor while you were taken out of the time line before a huge mistake happens."

"A huge mistake?" Clara exclaimed, "What's he done now?"

"Not him," Adelaide replied, _"You."_

Then the Tardis landed.

"Me?" Clara said, "What have I done? I don't understand!"

"You will," Adelaide replied, "But my husband needs to explain everything before you see the Doctor. In his timeline, he's _lost_ you. So wait here, you can't just walk in unannounced, he's not in a good place right now and we don't want to give him a shock."

Worry and confusion reflected in Clara's eyes.

"What do you mean? What's happened to him?"

"Just wait here, please," she repeated, and then she left the Tardis.

The door was still open and Clara hurried towards it.

Just as she did so, Adelaide had reached the house. She turned back, snapped her fingers and the door slammed shut, trapping Clara inside.

* * *

As it shut loudly, she stood there looking in surprise at the closed door, then Clara turned away and walked back towards the console, where she stood and waited for Adelaide's husband. She looked upwards in annoyance and confusion as she tried to speak to a Tardis she did not recognise, because this décor had been before her time.

"I haven't done anything!" she protested, and then as she listened to the hum that sounded low throughout the ship – something she was definitely familiar with, she thought some more on all Adelaide had told her.

"I haven't done anything... _yet_ ," she added quietly, "What did I do? What _will_ I do that's so bad time has to be rewritten?"

And the only answer that came back was that familiar low hum. Then Clara waited in silence, listening to that hum and wishing the Tardis could speak, because she wanted answers _now_...


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Talking about Clara had started off for the Doctor the same as it always did – vague memories that felt like a story. The Tenth Doctor had sat and listened, and then watched as the older Doctor had faltered, stumbling over his words as confusion took over. Then he had fallen silent, and as Adelaide returned, she had glanced at him and he had got up and walked over to the open doorway and joined his wife.

"Watch him," he said in a low voice, "The time line is still falling into place...I'm going to go and speak to Clara now."

Adelaide nodded, and then she went into the room to join the Twelfth Doctor, while her husband hurried back to his Tardis to have an important conversation that couldn't wait any longer.

* * *

Clara had been waiting in the Tenth Doctor's Tardis, saying nothing as she listened to the familiar hum of the ship and felt sure the Tardis knew everything, and would have told her about it, if she only could speak...

Then the door opened and the Tenth Doctor came in. He closed the door behind him and walked over to the console area to join Clara.

As he stepped closer she looked at him, wondering why there was something about him that seemed different to the man she recalled meeting on the day Gallifrey did not fall. And then she knew what it was – he looked tired and although she remembered him as tall and thin, built much like the older man she knew as the Doctor, he looked as if he had lost weight, and there were lines finely etched around his eyes and beneath his eyes were shadows that he couldn't hide.

"Adelaide told me about the radiation, I'm sorry," she said.

The Doctor brushed off her comment.

"I'm not here to talk about me. I'm here to talk about _you_ and how stupid you were!"

She blinked.

"I'm sorry, what? _Me?_ What am _I_ supposed to have done?"

"You grew over confident, too reckless," the Doctor said, "Oh, it's okay to take a risk, isn't it, Clara? Because the Doctor will _always_ save you! Well, there was a time when you went too far with that assumption and he _lost_ you because of it! _How would you like to spend the rest of your existence trapped in a single moment between the last beats of your own heart? To walk around with no pulse, no heart beat, frozen in a moment of time, in a tiny bubble of a moment that stands between you and oblivion?_ "

Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened as she turned over all he had said.

"But...how can that happen? I would _never_ put myself in that much danger!"

The Doctor held her in his dark gaze as he spoke again.

"But you did, Clara. And _he_ paid for that because he got himself locked into a prison for billions of years, a prison he had to fight his way out of, he even dragged the Time Lords into it, just so he could pull _you_ out of that moment and give you a second chance of life. He took you to the end of the universe, beyond time, just to try and make your heart start beating again - but it stayed silent. And when he couldn't take the pain any more, he agreed to a memory wipe that turned into something like Russian roulette – you wanted to keep the memories, he wanted you to forget but _you_ had to push for your own way so neither of you knew who was going to lose their memory! He got the short straw, Clara! His mind was wiped instead of yours and it drove him to the brink of suicide! That's your doing. _Your fault_."

She stared at him.

"No," she said as she shook her head, "I wouldn't ask that of him, I wouldn't ever want him to go that far for me!"

"He did it because he loves you," the Doctor replied, "Hasn't it ever occurred to you that all the time you were with Danny, even after you mourned his death, didn't you _know_ just how much his hearts were all yours? You _must_ have known!"

 _The Doctor was in love with her?_

Clara blinked as tears blurred her eyes and the ache in her own heart grew sharp.

"I hoped he did," she said quietly as she held back from weeping, "But the time just didn't seem right to say it -"

"You're telling him," he said firmly, "You're telling him tonight! He put himself through hell to try and save you. No one else would wait for you, go through billions of years of hell in your name the way he did! And he's suffering because of it. That's why I've taken you out of the time line and changed it. Everything that happened then, is gone. Pretty soon he's going to remember he's been looking for you. Then the faded story in his head will seem like a bad dream and in time, it will fade out completely. But Clara, you _have_ to stop taking risks. You've got one life and he needs you to spend it with him. _Don't kill him with your carelessness, because if you mess up, you will. He can't live without you._ "

Clara's hand trembled as she brought it up to her face and brushed away a tear that had threatened to spill down her cheek.

"Why are you doing this for him?" she said in a hushed voice.

The Doctor slid the knot from his tie and opened up the buttons of his shirt, stopping halfway down, and then he opened up his shirt, exposing his shoulders and upper chest where deep bruises and vivid red marks peppered his body.

"I'm dying," he stated plainly, "And every moment I spend with my family matters to me. You and him belong together. I just want you both to have something me and Adelaide can't have - a long and happy life together."

Pain reflected in his eyes and Clara knew she was staring at the marks on what would once have been a perfect body. She didn't mean to stare, but under the lights of the Tardis the glow seemed to emphasise the damage, and it was terrible.

"Enough about me," the Doctor said, and he quickly closed up his shirt and put his tie back on, "Let's talk about you and him - he thought you were just a story inside his head because of the memory wipe. That's undone now. He's going to be an emotional mess when you see him again. _Look after him_. And promise me you'll never, _ever_ be so reckless and stupid that you put your life in danger again, because he can't take that. _Promise me!_ "

She looked back at him, saying nothing as all he had told her began to register and she felt shocked to know how her life had ended in the other time line.

"Promise me!" he said again, "You _have_ to give me your word. Give your word to a dying Time Lord that you won't destroy the future for the man he one day becomes! I _need_ that assurance!"

Clara nodded.

"I promise," she said as tears glazed her eyes, "I mean it, I _will_ be careful! Now I know, things will be different. I'll look after him."

"That means taking no risks," he reminded her.

She nodded.

He turned for the door.

"Never forget we had this conversation," he told her, and then he led her out of the Tardis.

* * *

Adelaide had watched as the older Doctor had fallen silent, and then he had leant forward, putting his head in his hands.

"It's all sliding away..." he had whispered, "I'm losing her story..."

"Perhaps because it's just a story," Adelaide said kindly as she stood beside him. As she placed her hand on his shoulder he looked up at her, and he seemed so terribly lost and confused.

"I...I don't _know_ what happened to her any more...I lost her..."

"Tell me how you lost her," Adelaide said softly.

It was then the time line slid into place and the Doctor's blue eyes filled with tears.

" _I've been looking for her! She disappeared..."_

He got up from the armchair and his eyes were wide as he tried to handle a terribly awkward and painful swirl of emotions as he recognised the sensation that someone, somewhere, had grabbed at a piece of the timeline and given it a twist some how...

 _Clara wasn't lost._

 _She wasn't dead, or trapped in her last moment._

 _There had never been an encounter with the Raven because..._

 _She wasn't there._

 _He had turned up at the school to fetch her, and no one knew where she had gone. She had simply vanished..._

 _He had spent long and painful months looking for her._

 _But not billions of years trapped in a prison, none of that had happened._

 _Now that was all a story, even less, it was like a bad dream that was fading from his memory..._

"Where is she?" he said in a hushed voice.

He was shaking and on the brink of tears.

" _Right here, she's safe,"_ he heard his Tenth self say, and as he looked to the doorway and blinked to clear vision blurred with tears, the younger Doctor stepped aside, and Clara walked into the room.

He knew it was her, because he remembered her face now, he recalled everything about her because the memory wipe had never happened.

As their gaze met, he fell to his knees on the carpet and start to quietly sob.

Clara joined him, kneeling in front of him as she spoke softly to him.

"I'm okay," she said, "Really, I am. Look at me."

The Doctor raised his head and met her gaze as tears ran down his face.

" _Clara..."_ he said as emotion choked his voice.

"I love you," she told him, "I love you and I'm going to stay with you forever, have you got that? And there's no more danger or risks in the future, because I'm going to be careful. And there's no more bad dreams about me being a story...I'm okay. _None of it happened_."

He grabbed her hand hand felt her wrist, and as he felt the beat of her pulse he gave a sob.

" _I love you too!"_ he said, and his hands shook as he reached for her, then hesitated.

"Come here," Clara said softly, and suddenly, hugging wasn't half as awkward as he had imagined it to be as they embraced together and he wept in her arms.

As he cried against her shoulder she stroked his hair.

"It's alright,"she promised him, "I'm here, I'm never leaving you again. I love you with all my heart..."

And as they shared their emotional reunion, Adelaide felt her husband take hold of her hand and she turned her head and looked at him.

"Let's leave them alone for a while," he said in a low voice, "They need some privacy."

* * *

Adelaide went out into the kitchen and the Doctor joined her, and as he looked at her, he smiled brightly.

"He's going to be okay. I _love_ happy endings!"

She smiled too but her smile quickly faded.

"I haven't given up on us getting one too."

Sadness reflected in his eyes on hearing those words.

"I'm thankful for the time we do have," he replied, "I get to be with you and Steffi. That's enough for me. I'd trade in every other lifetime I have ahead of me for just a few short years with you, if I had to. You're everything to me."

Suddenly he had that look about him, the one she had come to recognise as knowing he needed a hand to hold. She put her arms around him and they stood there in the kitchen, locked in a tight embrace.

"I love you, Adelaide," he whispered as he held her.

"I love you too," she promised him, and then he let go of her.

Just then the Twelfth Doctor looked around the open doorway.

"Sorry...didn't mean to interrupt but Clara wants us to stay here tonight – is it okay if we have the sofa?"

They both nodded.

"Fine," his younger self said.

"I'll get you a spare duvet," Adelaide said, and then she left the room.

The Tenth Doctor looked to his older self and noticed his blue eyes were reddened from crying.

"Are you okay now?" he asked.

"Yes thanks," Twelve replied, "I'm okay...We both are...Thanks for your help. I just wish there was more I could do for you."

And then he fell silent, just standing there in the doorway as he looked to his younger self, a man who was very much aware the clock was ticking, because he couldn't last out for much longer in his damaged body.

The Tenth Doctor forced a smile.

"Don't worry about me." he said warmly, "To you, I'm history, I'm already gone. Just be happy with Clara. Have a great life together."

He was surprised to see the older Doctor's eyes fill up with tears again as he nodded.

"I will," he said, and he quickly wiped his eyes, "Sorry I'm so emotional...I can't help it...too much holding back, I guess. Or maybe this is how I am now when I'm in love."

His younger self smiled again.

"Don't fight your feelings," he told him, "Show her how you feel. Never hold back, not where she's concerned."

"I won't," he promised, and then Adelaide returned and handed him a duvet.

"We're off to bed now," she said, glancing to her husband, "I hope you and Clara sleep well."

Then she watched as he walked away back towards the front room. The Doctor joined her in the hallway and watched as the light in the front room went out. As they turned for the stairs Clara's voice could be heard from the front room as she said quietly:

"Yes, you know I love you too - do have to hold me so tight? _Stop_ squeezing me!"

And Adelaide exchanged a smile with her husband, who took her by the hand, and then they went upstairs together.

* * *

Clara woke early in the morning, still in her clothes, just like the Doctor, he was was beside her, his arms wrapped about her tightly, gripping her as if he were afraid she would vanish on him again.

"I'm not asleep," he informed her as she turned around in the cramped space and looked into his eyes, "I couldn't sleep. I just wanted to hold you all night, Clara. I listened to your breathing. I put my hand over your heart and felt every single beat. It was astonishing. I love you more than I can describe."

She smiled and leant in and they shared a kiss that at first was awkward on the Doctor's part, then he relaxed and their kiss deepened.

He broke off from it first.

"We should get up," he said, "We need to be ready to leave soon."

Clara got up from the sofa and straightened her clothing and then headed for the door. The Doctor hurried after her and as she reached the hallway she turned and looked at him in surprise.

"I'm going to the bathroom."

He smiled.

"Okay. We'll go to the bathroom."

She glared at him.

"On my own! Is this what you're going to be like from now on? I thought I was in love with a Time Lord, not a love sick puppy, which are you?"

His face flushed as he decided he was starting to like this sharing of his feelings, because for him, it was brand new.

"I think I'm a bit of both," he admitted, and her expression softened.

"I won't be a minute," she said, "Wait there!"

And she went up the stairs, and his gaze followed her all the way as he silently vowed never to let Clara out of his sight again, not for the rest of their days together.

* * *

After Adelaide had taken Steffi to school, they waited for her to return, and then the Doctor and Clara made their way back down the garden to the Tardis. As they walked, the Tenth Doctor and his wife noticed their hands stayed linked, it was clear his future self was literally going to keep a _very_ tight hold on Clara from now on...

When they reached the Tardis, he let go of Clara's hand and turned back to his younger self and smiled.

"I can't thank you enough for what you've done for us," he said warmly.

"It was no trouble at all," Ten replied, and Adelaide smiled.

"Now you can go and be happy together, enjoy life," Adelaide added, hoping the older Doctor would not get over emotional again and start crying, because his eyes looked misty again. It was as if admitting his love to Clara had opened up a floodgate of emotions that had so far been locked up tightly since his regeneration, and now it was all coming tumbling out in his love for her.

"We will be happy," he agreed, and then as he looked as his younger self and Adelaide, the timeline fell into place.

He had just reached again for Clara's hand but he pulled back, drawing in a sharp breath as he closed his eyes.

"Sorry.. time's locking into place...give me a minute..."

His eyes were still closed as the once grey area cleared of mist and he saw all that had been and was yet to be:

 _He saw the ship, the one captained in the future by Adelaide._

 _He was there with Clara, and they watched on a monitor as the water poured in and the crew began to convulse and then the skin around their mouths cracked as their eyes changed and their open mouths ran with water..._

 _It was the Flood._

 _They were all infected and this time, the infection had not come from Mars..._

" _There's a way to stop it," Adelaide said as she watched the screen, "D - Section can be primed for detonation and detached from the ship."_

 _And he had looked to Clara, who was staring in alarm at the sight of the flood infected crew._

" _I can't take the Tardis in there to do it," he told her, "The water's already in!"_

 _Adelaide turned and looked up at him, her eyes blazing in fury._

" _You have to!" she yelled._

" _I can't!" he said firmly._

 _Tears filled her eyes._

" _You have to, Doctor!" she said desperately, "You have to find a way – because you need it get her out! Steffi's in there, she's trapped!"_

" _I can't!" he said again._

 _The scene shifted to D - Section, where the infected were running the water along the floor and Steffi was running away. She was heading for a corner that led to a dead end, and the Flood were running after her at frightening speed. The young woman with the Tenth Doctor's dark hair and eyes looked back, saw them advancing and turned a corner – and slammed into someone, she bounced back but he caught her, saving her from falling:_

 _A man in an orange space suit._

 _She looked up at him, her eyes wide with disbelief._

" _Dad?" she whispered, and the Tenth Doctor said nothing as he let go of her, aimed his sonic screw driver at some loose wiring, gave it a blast and the sparking wires hit the water, shocking the Flood as they fell to the floor..._

The vision faded and the Doctor breathed out in relief as he opened his eyes, and looked to his Tenth self, and then to Adelaide, wondering how this would come about, because clearly, in the vision, his Tenth incarnation had looked as if the radiation poisoning had never happened...

"And...everything is fine," he lied, omitting all he had just seen, because he needed to think on it, "I just saw it all fall into place. Now I can leave."

But his younger self was curious, because the Doctor had smiled as he spoke those words, yet he seemed uneasy about something...

"What did you just see?" he asked him suspiciously.

"Let's just say one day the four of us will meet again and it's going to be quite a reunion..certainly one to remember," he replied, and then he took Clara by the hand, led her into the Tardis and closed the door.

* * *

"What was all that about? What _did_ you see?" Clara asked him.

The Doctor hastily activated the flight controls, and the Tardis left Earth and was once more floating in space, where he felt most at home.

"I'm not sure," he replied, "I now understand what my own words mean, but I'm not quite sure how it happens.. that's what we need to work out."

Clara walked around the console and looked up at him and smiled.

"How about we forget everything for now and just concentrate on us?"

It surprised her to see the Doctor still looked worried - after such an emotional reunion, his thoughts were far from thinking on their new found closeness.

"Clara, Clara, I'm sorry," he said apologetically, " _We_ have to wait. This is too urgent to ignore."

"What is?" she asked.

Worry reflected in his blue eyes as he thought of all he had witnessed in the vision.

" _Lives are at stake,"_ he replied, " _Something is going to happen and we play a part in it – and I have to figure out what I'm supposed to do next. Because I just saw a dead man save his daughter from the Flood..."_


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

After the Tardis had left - for a while - life had gone on as usual for the Tenth Doctor and Adelaide.

 _And that time was passing by and running out too quickly._

Now and then, he would look back and recall that look he had seen in the eyes of his future self, as if that man had seen something that he could not share, something that perhaps had been terrible – yet he didn't understand why he had refused to share it with his former self, because surely, this life he lived now was his past, and what harm would there be in telling his past about a future he wouldn't live to see?

And what he had said about the _four_ of them – that had played on his mind too, he had spent many nights when he ought to be sleeping to try and take as much care as he could of his fragile health, staying awake instead, long into the early hours of the morning, trying to work out what had been meant by the other Doctor saying _the four of us_.

What _had_ that meant?  
He could only assume he had meant that one day, his older self and Clara, and Adelaide and Steffi would be reunited, they would meet up some how.

 _Timey-wimey stuff._

Stuff that wouldn't concern him, because he knew he wouldn't last much longer. Maybe he would live to see Steffi grow up – but eventually, he knew he would have to regenerate... But he kept thinking about it, because there had been a look in the other Doctor's eyes that he had tried and failed to hide – there was much more to that remark about _the four of us_...

But no matter how often he thought on it, he always got the feeling that one day it would make sense – but not here, not now in this time line, yet one day, it _would_ make sense to him – as he was now, and he didn't see how that could be, because in this life, his time was running out...

Several years after his Twelfth self had left with Clara in the Tardis and the remark about _the four of us_ still nagged at the back of his tired mind, the Doctor was in bed resting, feeling partly relieved that the machine salvaged from the alien ship no longer worked to counteract the radiation, because it was painful to go through and at least he didn't have to do that any more. The downside to that meant he was too weak to have any more treatments, but so far the medication he was replicating thanks to the Tardis meant he lived his life more or less free of pain, even though he was growing weaker and he knew that soon, he would have to give in to the inevitable and allow the fires of regeneration to take over...

* * *

It had been early one morning on a spring day when the sun was warm and the open window let in a breeze that carried with it the scent of the garden, when the Doctor woke up beside Adelaide and _just knew_ his time was over.

He didn't feel as if he was about to take his last breath, he even felt like a small reserve of energy he hadn't realised he still had left had just filled him up and made him feel like he could for a short time, and enjoy life once more.

But that was just his body getting ready to be consumed by the fires of regeneration. He wasn't going to hope for more, because he knew there was no chance of this situation changing now...

He turned over in bed and took Adelaide in his arms and as she opened her eyes he smiled as he looked down at her.

"It's all been so good, you and me...and I've got this strange feeling that it's not going to be over even when it is. I'm not even sure what I mean by that."

She opened her mouth to speak but he covered it with a kiss, and then pulled away from that kiss to allow her to breathe as she gave a gasp and he moved against her firmly, never taking his gaze from hers as he made love to her with the kind of energy he had missed for many years.

The orgasm, when it hit, didn't even wipe him out like it usually did in his exhausted state, instead he closed his eyes and made the moment last as long as it could, just to keep their bodies as one as he held her and felt her tremble in his arms.

Then he rolled on to his back and lay beside her and breathed heavily, turned his head and looked at her and smiled.

"One day," he vowed, "I don't know when or how, but I'll thank you for this."

Adelaide had found staying strong difficult lately, especially after being told he was now too weak to continue with the treatment to slow the radiation damage, but today he seemed so different, so much more like the man she had met on Mars, before the radiation...

She smiled and her eyes sparkled as she considered what he had just said.

"You want to thank me for good sex?"

He laughed.

"No!" then his amusement faded, but the love that shone in his eyes remained, "I want to thank you for everything. For us, for Steffi, for all the years we've spent together being a family, and for this, for looking after me now we know I'm only going to get worse."

Adelaide had never stopped keeping up her firm resolution to stay positive for his sake.

"And today you look better than you have for a long while," she told him, "Now stop talking like this is the end! You're a Time Lord, you could prove everyone wrong and live for many years to come. Now I'm getting up, I need to get dressed, Steffi's back in an hour."

He thought about Steffi, who was now a teenager and had spent the night at a friends house having a sleep over. He guessed he would have to get this over and done with before she got back. He didn't want her to see him regenerate, she worried about him and he knew today was the day he would leave, and it didn't seem right to say goodbye to her because...

 _He would see her again._

 _They would meet again one day._

He couldn't explain why he felt so sure of that, because regeneration would mean setting himself on to the path he was meant to take to ensure the timeline remained unchanged for his next life...

 _But they would, one day._

 _Him and Steffi would meet again and he would be seeing Adelaide again, too..._

* * *

As Adelaide left the bedroom, the Doctor sat up in bed and closed his eyes, understanding that time was being kind, because he was dying and this time he wasn't fighting it, and he was being allowed to see something that his Twelfth self would have called a grey area, except that for a moment, that haze had lifted, and he saw a glimpse of a future life – a _far_ future life, long after his Twelfth life was over...this was perhaps his thirteenth, or fourteenth life :

Adelaide was standing at a bar in a very fancy restaurant and going by the look of the bar staff with their part insect features, this was not earth and she was in some far off time and place – _how_ had she got there? The back of the bar was mirrored and he saw her reflection as she stood there in an elegant silken gown, and she looked as good as she did the day they had first met on Mars...

 _How come she had not aged?_

He walked over to the bar, turned his head and briefly caught sight of his own reflection - and as he saw through his future eyes, the Doctor smiled...

 _Good choice._

 _Clever choice._

 _Of course she would know it was him, that was why he had chosen this appearance when he had regenerated..._

 _He was almost as he had looked in his Tenth life, but with a difference..._

He joined her at the bar.

"Adelaide," he said, and she turned her head and looked at him.

"I said I'd thank you one day," he told her, and then the scene faded from his mind, because it was yet to be, and there would be many years before they had that meeting...

Right now, he was still in his Tenth life, and he knew that life was ready to come to an end. The flickers of aches he felt through his bones as he got out of bed and reached for his clothing only served to remind him that time was short now.

By the time he had got dressed, straightened his tie and put on his coat, as he looked into the mirror it surprised him to see all trace of the pain he had been through was gone now – the shadows under his eyes had vanished, the lines etched deeper around his eyes had faded away – it was regeneration, the process was already starting.

 _He had to get back to the Tardis..._

* * *

As the Doctor reached the bottom of the stairs, he saw Adelaide had gone to the front door, and he heard her welcome home their daughter, who was back early. He hurried through to the kitchen, opened the back door and went outside, pausing for a moment to lean against the brick work of the house as the sight of the Tardis beneath the shade of the tree briefly blurred and doubled. He drew in a sharp breath and walked towards it, knowing he had to be inside when the process began.

Unlocking the Tardis door was difficult because his vision blurred again, but he gave the key a shove and it went into the lock and he turned it, pushed the door open and went inside.

He took off his coat and tossed it aside, his body felt as if firelight had started to flicker up from deep in his bones, his Time Lord body having had enough of dealing with the radiation that had constantly attacked it over the past few years – this was it, he was regenerating, and he had no choice in the matter...

"I don't want to go," he whispered as he thought of his wife and child.

" _Doctor?"_

He looked around to see Adelaide had dashed through the open doorway and into the Tardis. Just as his strength left him and he grabbed at the side of the console and then slid to his knees, she was there on the floor beside him, and she was holding him in her arms.

"You have to fight this!" she said to him as tears filled her eyes.

He looked up at her.

"You should go...just go...this is dangerous..."

"I'm not leaving you," she vowed.

"Just go," he said again as he breathed in and swore he felt the fires rising up within him, "And be happy, I want you to do that – one day, I'll see you again...just live your life and be happy, Adelaide..."

He wanted to tell her to let go of him, because he could feel the heat rising in his body, but it was too late. As he slumped in her arms and his eyes closed, she held him tightly, weeping for his loss.

And the fire burst out without warning, setting him in a blaze of light that threw her back, as she hit the floor of the console room she saw fire above and around her, the Tardis was ablaze, and so was she...she brushed at the flame on the back of her hand, but it kept on burning and she felt like her lungs were on fire.

" _MUM!"_

She heard her daughter's terrified shout, and then Steffi had grabbed her and dragged her and she had managed to get to her feet as all around, burning debris fell from the Tardis ceiling...

Steffi dragged her outside, and Adelaide dropped to her knees and rolled on the lawn as she tried to put out the fire that had caught her hand and her clothing.

The Tardis engines fired up, and the blue box faded in and out of sight and vanished.

* * *

 _Now the garden was silent._

Steffi stood there watching in horror as her mother lay on the ground, her face and hands reddened by flame and her clothing blackened by soot.

"Mum?" she said again, and Adelaide sat up, and on feeling an odd crackling sensation beneath her skin, put her hands to her face and wiped away the soot from the fire – and with it, she also wiped away the burns, and now her daughter was staring at her, because not only had the burns vanished, but her mother looked twenty years younger, too...

Adelaide got up and turned to look at the place where the Tardis had once stood, and seeing that empty space made her want to weep – but she was very aware that something was swirling inside her, and she she closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath, and slowly breathed out a final trace of the regenerative flame.

Then she looked down at her hand, brushed it with her palm, and what had been a weeping, blistering burn healed instantly, leaving a scar. She felt sure if she did that again, the scar would also be gone – but she wanted to keep it to remember the day the man she loved had handed her his gift...

"Mum? Are you okay?"

She looked to Steffi, and instead of weeping for the loss of her husband, love and strength remained inside her.

"I'm fine," she promised her, "He left me his gift, don't you see? You're part time lord, and now, so am I..."

And then as Steffi looked to the place where the Tardis had stood and started to cry, Adelaide embraced her daughter, and they stood there together, mourning the loss of Doctor as Adelaide recalled his parting words, that they _would_ meet again some day...

* * *

" _Think, Clara!"_

As the Twelfth Doctor paced the floor of the console room, she stared at him.

"I don't know what you're supposed to do! You should know, you're the Doctor!"

He stopped pacing and joined her by the controls, looking at her impatiently.

"The four of us...me, you, Adelaide...and him, my Tenth self...but we've just left him with his family, and he's going die and regenerate...that's how it goes. That's the last days of his life. It's already happened, it's in the past for me...So _why_ do I see him on board Adelaide's ship? How can he be there if he's already dead?"

He was looking at her like she had all the answers, and she didn't.

"I don't know. And do you remember your Tenth self made me promise not to take risks? Because I'm trying to keep that promise and stay out of this!"

His blue eyes widened as the recollection fell into place.

"Yes, I do recall he asked you to promise to keep out of trouble! But you won't be at risk and neither will I – we're on the other side of the ship when the Flood attacks. But Steffi is trapped in there with them. And somehow, my Tenth self is on board, in D Section when it happens."

Clara thought about it.

"But he wouldn't have been there if he was dying from the radiation. After that happened he went home to Adelaide and Steffi and raised his family on Earth..."

She stopped and started to smile as she met his gaze, and his eyes lit up as he got it, too.

"I spent a century running from my fate!" he exclaimed, "I remember..."

He dashed over to the other side of the console and began to hit switches, and then as he looked to Clara, she saw the thrill of adventure light up in his eyes.

"I remember where I went, after I felt Adelaide on Earth, after I saved her from Mars...the Tardis was trying to pull me to the Ood planet, that was where it began, the start of the end...the encounter with the Master – but I had other plans. I ran..."

The look in her eyes matched his because the Doctor's enthusiasm was contagious.

"So all we have to do is go back through time and catch up with him, and tell him where he needs to be?"

The Doctor was smiling as he gave his reply.

" _Yes, we just have to catch up with him!"_ he exclaimed, as he threw a lever and the ship changed course, _"Let the chase begin!"_


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Pursuing his other self had not been the difficult task Clara had first imagined it to be – because all the Doctor had to do was pause and think, and he knew _exactly_ where to find his Tenth self.

As the Tardis landed, the Doctor looked at Clara and seemed very confident, and that worried her a little - because in all the time she had travelled with him she had quickly learned that if something could go wrong, it would. The unexpected always came into play, and where that unknown element used to give her a thrill like nothing on earth ever could, at the back of her mind she was now thinking on the promise she had made to take more care, because there was nothing like being told about her own demise to make her slam on the brakes and realise just how reckless she had become of late...

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" she asked him.

The Doctor had reached the Tardis door, and she joined him just as he placed his hand on the door to push it open. He turned back and looked at her.

"Clara, this is my own past. I know where I went and I know how long I ran for...not long in terms of how a Time Lord would see the passing of time, but right here and now, if I can persuade him to go forward in time and find her, he will be in the right place and time to save Steffi and stop the Flood."

She paused for thought.

"So he's just left her on Earth after the Mars base exploded. And he doesn't know she's pregnant."

"No, but if I tell him to go forward and meet with her in the far future, she's meeting with him _before_ the radiation. He will have to keep his mouth shut about all he knows when he goes back to her – and she will have to stay quiet about his past – which to him, is his future and hasn't happened yet. They could have a few more years together before he's forced to go back to answer the call of the Ood planet. And that moment is when he has to return her to her right time and place and say goodbye forever."

Clara stared at him.

"So she met him on Mars, had his child, he returns to her when he's dying, they spend a few years together on Earth, then he regenerates and leaves and...years later in the future, the version of him yet to fight the Master meets up with her and Steffi and stops the Flood?"

He smiled.

"Simple, isn't it?"

"To a Time Lord!" she exclaimed, and then she suddenly thought of something else:

"She's going to have a _very_ long life.."

"Adelaide was holding him when the regeneration started and she absorbed some regenerative power. They could have centuries together, eventually."

Then the Doctor fell silent.

He could feel her eyes on him, demanding to know more, and as he looked at her again, he dismissed all he had just said, remembering Clara had only one life, and he was going to spend that time with her.

"I mean...p _ossibly_. I can't be sure about that theory. Let's go and find my other self."

Then they left the Tardis together.

* * *

They found the Tenth Doctor not far from where they had landed, the planet was peaceful and unspoiled and Clara saw no buildings, only fields and trees and a clear stream that ran down towards the mouth of a wide river far ahead.

The Tenth Doctor was standing on the bank, near his own Tardis, watching the water flow as he stayed lost in his own thoughts.

Clara stood back and watched as the Doctor approached his former self, who turned his head and seemed unsurprised to see him there.

"I thought I heard another Tardis land," he said, "Which one are you? I know you have to be a future Doctor, but I couldn't guess at the number."

"I'm number Twelve," he replied, "And we have yet to meet – I'm slipping through the time line to do this."

The Tenth Doctor turned from the water and looked at him in confusion.

"Explain?"

"It's simple," he replied, "I caught up with you a few years after you decided to start running from the prophecy. I told you about a family on Earth you never knew about and told you to return to them after the prophecy had been fulfilled. Now listen to me very carefully – we both know we have to handle time time line with care: _You will return to Earth, much later, after the prophecy is fulfilled. You go back to Adelaide Brooke, who is pregnant with your daughter Steffi._ "

He paused as his younger self stared at him and the news registered.

"What?" he said, " _What?_ Adelaide's pregnant -"

"And you will return to her and raise a family with her. But where you're going, that's your future and it's already happened in her past. You need to go forward, thirty years after you left her on Earth and you need to board her ship because it's bringing back a water sample and guess what? _The Flood isn't a parasite restricted only to Mars._ "

His dark eyes widened as he thought of the terror he had just left behind, the Flood had wiped out most of the crew of Bowie Base One and if it happened again...

Then something else hit him.

"You said my _daughter_ is on board?"

The Doctor gestured to his younger self's Tardis.

"We should go inside and talk, I'll set the flight plan for you. Then me and Clara will go back to our own Tardis and we can meet you on board the ship..."

And Clara watched as the two Doctors walked off together and went inside the Tardis.

* * *

After what seemed like a very long time, the Doctor left the other Tardis and returned to the spot where Clara had stood waiting, as she had waited, she had watched the water flowing clear and clean towards the mouth of the river, and she had thought about all he had explained about Mars.

"What are they, these Flood?" she asked.

The Doctor's eyes clouded with a look she knew too well - it answered her question instantly.

"One drop of water is all it takes to become infected," he said in a hushed voice, "All these years I thought the strain was isolated to Mars – that was naive of me. It's water-borne. In theory, there could be many planets out there carrying the same or similar threats, but we just don't know about them yet. Let's go. We have to leave first, I need to explain a few facts to Adelaide before my other self arrives."

As they walked back to the Tardis, she asked him a question:

"But are you sure you can trust her with everything she needs to know? I mean, to her, he's been dead for more than fifteen years, don't you think when she sees him again, alive and well after coming back from the past, that she might be tempted to tell him everything about his own future?"

They had reached the Tardis door.

The Doctor looked at her and shook his head.

"I know she won't do that. If this was about anyone else, I wouldn't be investing such trust in her strength of mind and her ability to stay quiet about how it ends - but I know I can do this with her, I trust her because she's Adelaide Brooke."

Then they went inside and moments later, the Tardis took flight.

* * *

The Tardis landed in the same comfortable seating area where the Doctor had last visited, and as he and Clara stepped out of the Tardis, Adelaide rose from a seat by a viewing port that showed a wide view of starlit space and looked at him in surprise. Then she saw Clara was with him and smiled as he walked up to her.

"I take it I'm not too early this time?" he asked.

She took hold of his hands as she looked at him with fondness.

"You're right on time, Doctor. And it's good to see you're not alone any more. He's missed you," she added, looking to Clara.

But the Doctor was still holding on to her hands as he looked into her eyes.

"I remember everything," he said warmly, "The life we shared, raising Steffi, how you looked after me when I was dying...and this is not the end, but I'm not the one who needs to explain that to you."

And she looked at him in slight confusion as something registered in her eyes, and as he let go of Adelaide's hands, Clara felt a sting of jealousy that she couldn't explain as she thought of her one life with her Doctor, and the possibility that Adelaide would have much more than that, albeit with a different version of the man she loved...

"Where's Steffi?" he asked.

"D-Section, working with the research team on a water sample," she replied, and the Doctor exchanged an uneasy glance with Clara and she knew what that meant:

 _Yes, they were certainly on time..._

The Doctor paused, and then he held Adelaide in his gaze as he spelled out the facts:

"You're going to see him again, your husband, the Tenth version of me. But he's just come out of a past time stream, in the days he travelled alone before the radiation. No matter what happens, you must _never_ tell him how it ends. For you, its already happened, but for him, it's in the future."

Adelaide stared at him as she blinked away tears, but there was no time to respond because an alert sounded and a monitor jumped to life.

 _This was it._

 _All he had seen was about to play out, and it was a fixed point in time, meaning he could only watch and wait to see the outcome..._

* * *

It all played out just as the Doctor had seen in the glimpse showed by time:

As he stood beside Clara, they watched on a monitor as the water poured in as a crew member shouted for help – but it was too late. The water was streaming in jets from the mouths of the infected and the crew began to convulse and then the skin around their mouths cracked as their eyes changed and their open mouths ran with water...

 _It was the Flood._

 _They were all infected and this time, the infection had not come from Mars..._

"There's a way to stop it," Adelaide said as she watched the screen, "D - Section can be primed for detonation and detached from the ship."

And he had looked to Clara, who was staring in alarm at the sight of the Flood infected crew.

"I can't take the Tardis in there to do it," he told her, "The water's already in!"

Adelaide turned and looked up at him, her eyes blazing in fury.

" _You have to!"_ she yelled.

" _I can't!"_ he said firmly.

Tears filled her eyes.

" _You have to, Doctor!"_ she said desperately, _"You have to find a way – because you need it get her out! Steffi's in there, she's trapped!"_

" _I can't!"_ he said again...

* * *

In D - Section, where the infected were running the water along the floor, Steffi was running away. She was heading for a corner that led to a dead end, and the Flood were running after her at frightening speed. The young woman with the Tenth Doctor's dark hair and eyes looked back, saw them advancing and turned the corner – and slammed into someone, she bounced back but he caught her, saving her from falling:

 _A man in an orange space suit._

She looked up at him, her eyes wide with disbelief.

" _Dad?"_ she whispered, and the Tenth Doctor said nothing as he let go of her, aimed his sonic screw driver at some loose wiring, gave it a blast and the sparking wires hit the water, shocking the Flood as they fell to the floor...

* * *

The Doctor's prediction made many years before had been accurate.

It _was_ a reunion to remember for all four of them.

As the Tenth Doctor's Tardis materialised beside the other Tardis, the now detached D-Section of the ship that had drifted free exploded.

Adelaide looked to the blast and the shatter fragments that dissolved into sparks of light that faded out, and then she looked to the man in the space suit, and he saw the look in her eyes and remembered how the Adelaide Brooke he knew and loved could not bear to kill anyone.

"I'm so sorry, I had no choice," he said as he walked towards her and Steffi ran to her mother and hugged her, "They were all infected. They couldn't have returned to earth. Remember, one drop of that water, just one drop..."

She nodded as Steffi let go of her.

"I know," she said in a hushed voice, and then as it finally hit home that her daughter was safe and the threat of the Flood was gone, she looked into the eyes of the man she had lost fifteen years before and smiled.

"I know your future," she said.

"And don't tell me a single word of it!" he reminded her.

"I won't!" she promised.

Then the monitor jumped to life and Steffi ran over and began to address the remaining crew. She looked back at her mother.

"We need to get the ship back to Earth. We have to jump the time zone and go straight back and warn them to keep that planet isolated!"

"And so you should," the Tenth Doctor said as he smiled at his daughter, _"Someone needs to take charge and it might as well be you."_

Steffi looked at him in confusion, but he turned back to Adelaide as he explained the rest.

"All I've done is rush around – had no time for any explanations...now is the time to do it. He," the Doctor indicated to his future self, "Set this up for us and Steffi. He pulled me out of the timeline pretty soon after I'd left you, but he's timed it just right. He told me about the flood, I put on my space suit to protect me from the water and I got here in time to save our daughter. _And that's not how it ends._ "

She blinked away tears.

"What are you saying?"

He indicated to the open door of his Tardis.

"You and me could spend some more time together. When the cloister bell rings and I'm forced back to answer the call of the Ood, we have to say goodbye, and this time it will be forever...well, until you bump into another version of me many years from now...But if you can deal with all of that, my ship is waiting and I don't want to waste any more time. _Come with me_."

Adelaide turned to her daughter.

Steffi started to smile, and that was all she needed to see to make her choice.

"I think this means you're the captain now!" she told her daughter.

Steffi laughed as she hugged her mother tightly and then let go again.

"Go with him, Mum," she said as tears of joy shone in her eyes, "Go with my Dad and be happy."

Adelaide turned back to the Doctor. As their eyes met he held out his hand and she took hold of it, and he led her into the Tardis. The door closed and the ship faded in and out of sight and then vanished.

"And now we should be leaving," the Twelfth Doctor said, and he grabbed Clara's hand tightly as he smiled, it was the kind of grip that told her _very_ clearly he had no intention of losing her _ever_ again.

They went back to the Tardis, and as the door closed and then as the second blue box disappeared from sight, Steffi smiled as she looked to the stars and thought of her parents, out there somewhere and together again.

* * *

As the Tenth Doctor's Tardis drifted in starlit space, he ran around the other side of the console and finished checking the flight plan, then as he kept his gaze on the controls, he asked a question.

"Are you sure you can handle this, knowing my future and never telling me about it?"

"Of course I'm sure, " Adelaide replied, "I understand about the time line!"

"And you do know this isn't forever, don't you?" He leant on the console and turned his head, looking into her eyes.

"It doesn't matter if I have five weeks, hours or minutes with you," she replied, "Every second we can be together is precious. I know time is short but it's time I get to spend with you, time I never thought I'd have."

The Doctor turned from the console and stepped closer to her as he placed his hands on her hips and then slid them around her waist, pulling her closer.

It was then she realised he had a sparkle in his eyes.

"We have considerably more time than a few weeks," he admitted, _"How does a hundred years sound?"_

She looked at him in amazement, and then she laughed, and he pulled her closer and kissed her, and as he held her tightly, he closed his eyes and silently remembered, even when his life was done with, they _would_ meet again – _it still wasn't over yet..._


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

 **Three Hundred Years Later:**

Adelaide was alone standing at the bar of restaurant in a far off time and place, on a resort planet where she had planned to spend some time relaxing – although she had been alone for a long time, and still she missed the Doctor. Their century together had given her enough memories to carry her though several more lifetimes, even though the pain of their final goodbye felt like it would never fade.

She stood there in her silken dress, waiting for the insect bar staff, who were busy with other customers. While she waited, she thought she heard a sound like rushing wind, and it reminded her of a Tardis landing, but she dismissed the idea...

 _And then she wasn't alone any more._

"Adelaide," he said, and she turned her head and looked at him.

" _I said I'd thank you one day,"_ he told her, _"And here I am."_

She turned from the bar, and she didn't look a day older than she had when he had met her on Mars centuries before. She had taken care of herself, she hadn't even regenerated yet...

She looked at the man who stood before her, his slim build cut a dashing figure in his dark suit with silken lapels. He paused to run his fingers through dark, silky _fantastic_ hair and she caught a glimpse of a very expensive wrist watch, it was made of gold and the skeleton kind, but the cogs were engraved with swirls that looked decidedly Gallifreyan...

She blinked, and carried on staring at him.

"Do I know you?"

He fixed her with his dark gaze, it was gaze that reminded her of the Doctor in his Tenth life, but this man was younger, he was no older than twenty five...

"Yes, you do know me," he replied, "How's Steffi?"

His question took her by surprise.

"She's fine. Bit clumsy, regenerated twice in the last two centuries but she's getting on okay – working for Unit currently. Are you a friend of hers?"

He smiled.

"I have two sons," he replied, "One of them works for Unit. He passed on the time manipulation device to enable you to get here. And my other son who sent you the invite for this holiday resort owns this hotel with his wife – she's the green one behind the bar."

Adelaide looked in surprise to the female insect people who were busy with customers.

"They look like head lice!" she said in surprise.

"But she's a very nice girl!" he replied quickly.

Adelaide was still staring at him.

He didn't look old enough to have grown up sons who worked for Unit and owned a holiday resort...

"Who are you?" she asked again.

He stepped closer and lowered his voice.

"I thought my appearance might give it away...like your husband, but younger? I had one hundred and twenty three happy years with Clara Oswald and together we had two sons. That was many years ago. After she died, I carried on alone, regenerated twice... and finally, I caught up with the right time and place to find you. Here and now. _I said it wasn't the end_."

" _Doctor?"_ she said in surprise, and he smiled.

"This is a new start for me – I'm hoping this body will last for years, and I'm planning to keep out of trouble because the boys don't like it. I'm parked over there, when you're ready."

She looked across the room, down a tiled walkway that led out of the restaurant, and there it was, something she had not seen for many years:

 _The Tardis._

He held out his hand, and she took hold of it.

"Let's go," he said.

"I've missed you," she replied as they walked hand in hand towards the blue box.

"I was held up. Time, it's difficult to explain," he added.

"But you got here in the end," she said, and as they reached the Tardis they exchanged a smile.

"I see it now," she told him, "You _do_ remind me of the man I married. That's why you chose this look when you regenerated?"

"It was time to come back for you," he told her, "And I'm never letting you go again. This time, we have all the time we deserve – no breaks, no pauses, nothing out of sequence. Just a straight line, unbroken."

She stepped closer and looked into his eyes, and saw the man she loved, the man who had saved her on Mars, reflected back at her.

"You take your time," she told him, "But you're worth waiting for."

He leant closer, they kissed, and then he held her tightly for a moment before letting go, and that was when he grabbed her by the hand.

"Let's run off," he said to her.

"You've nothing to run from!" she reminded him.

The Doctor smiled as he opened up the door and led her inside his brightly lit, newly redecorated ship and the door closed behind them. As she followed him over to the console and he activated the controls, he glanced at her as amusement sparkled in his eyes.

"You're right, I _do_ have nothing to run from."

"So why _are_ we running?" she asked him.

"Let's just run for the sake of it, because it's _fun_!" he exclaimed, and she laughed as the Tardis engines fired up, and then the blue box shimmered, faded out, and vanished from sight.

End


End file.
